Casa del Arte (Pinacoteca)

University art museum home to the giant Camarena mural

The Casa del Arte, also called the Pinacoteca, is the art museum of the Universidad de Concepción and the single most important sight in the city. Its permanent collection covers two centuries of Chilean painting, from the early national period through to contemporary work, but most visitors come for the entrance hall and the mural that fills it.

Camarena's Presencia de América Latina is one of the great muralist works outside Mexico, planned during the height of the Latin American boom and gifted to the university by the Mexican government in a gesture of pan-American solidarity. Even if you only walk in for fifteen minutes, it's worth the detour. Entry is free, and the museum sits on the south edge of the leafy university campus.

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A story
The mural that fills the entrance hall — Presencia de América Latina — was painted between 1964 and 1965 by Mexican artist Jorge González Camarena, working with a team of Chilean and Mexican painters. At 35 by 6 metres it covers an entire wall, an allegory of indigenous and mestizo Latin America composed around a single seated woman.