Museum of Goa

A surprise in a roadside industrial estate near Pilerne, the Museum of Goa (MOG) is the best contemporary art space anywhere on the north Goa coast. Three storeys of installations, paintings and sculpture by Goan and Indian artists explore Goan identity, Portuguese colonial history, ecology, and contemporary politics.

It's a half-hour scooter ride from Calangute beach, but well worth the detour — especially if the heat of the afternoon has driven you off the sand. The ground-floor café does decent coffee and the rooftop has a view across the paddy. Open Tuesday to Sunday; closed Mondays.

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A story
The museum was started in 2015 by the Goan painter Subodh Kerkar, partly as a protest against the state's lack of contemporary art space. The permanent collection turns recurring Goan materials — fishing nets, salt, oyster shells, lateritic earth — into installation work that argues, in effect, that Goa is a place rather than a postcard.