The MAN — Museo d'Arte Provincia di Nuoro — is the main contemporary and modern art museum for the province, housed in a handsome building near the Corso Garibaldi. The permanent collection focuses on twentieth-century Sardinian art, from the realist paintings of the early 1900s through to more recent experimental work, and is considerably stronger than you might expect from a town of this size.
Temporary exhibitions are regularly mounted in the ground-floor galleries and tend to draw artists from across Italy and internationally. The museum acts as the main cultural venue for Nuoro, hosting lectures, film screenings, and events tied to the wider Sardinian art scene. The permanent collection by itself takes about an hour; if a major temporary show is on, allow more.
The café adjoining the museum is a pleasant place to stop, and the museum shop stocks a good range of catalogues and books on Sardinian art and culture — better than most gift shops of this kind.