Just across the border from Condado in Santurce, the Museum of Contemporary Art occupies a handsomely converted former school building — the 1918 Carnegie Library building on the corner of Ponce de León and R.H. Todd avenues. The institution is the main serious contemporary art space in Puerto Rico, with a permanent collection focused on Caribbean and Latin American work alongside a rotating international exhibition program. The quality is consistently high and the programming takes real risks.
The permanent collection has particular strengths in Puerto Rican artists from the 1960s onward, including work that engaged directly with the political questions that have defined the island's 20th and 21st centuries. The building's spaces have been thoughtfully adapted — the high-ceilinged rooms and interior courtyard work well for the scale of art shown here. Admission is charged on most days; Sundays are free. The museum is walkable from the lagoon end of Condado in about fifteen minutes through the Santurce neighborhood, which has its own street art scene worth noticing along the way.