When doing the touristy thing in Buenos Aires it’s easy to get surreptitiously slammed by entrance fees that you didn’t foresee when planning your budget. If you’re hitting up clubs every night I don’t think there’s much you can do to get out of those cover charges, however, most museums offer free or at least reduced admissions on certain days of the week that are worth making note of.
MALBA, or the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires charges 5 pesos for general admission, 3 for teachers and seniors, and students with proper identification (which doesn’t have to be an ISIC) get in free every Wednesday from 12:00-9:00 pm. This is one of the most famous and impressive modern art museums in the country and houses works by Frida Khalo, Pablo Reinoso and Fernando Botero amongst other notables. It’s worth the price of admission any day of the week, but at least on Wednesdays you feel like you’re getting something for nothing.
The second museum on everybody’s list of things to see in BsAs is the MNBA, Museo Nacional de Belles Artes. Good news here, it’s always free. There is a suggested donation of two pesos, and unless you’re seriously scrimping, why not pony up? But just because it’s free doesn’t mean the collection isn’t worth seeing. They’ve got a room full of Goyas, including some cartoon-like sketches of his you don’t often see, and their donated galleries are an antiquities hoarder’s fantasy. If you tire easily of Monets and Manets and Pissarros, then the donated galleries are sure to impress with their displays from the private collections of eccentrics who never met a painting or a nicknack they didn’t like.
Those are the two main museums in Buenos Aires, the Guggenheim and Met of Argentina if you will, but there’s one place you can’t leave without seeing and that’s the Evita Museum. Open from Tuesday to Sunday and on holidays from 2:00 pm to 7:30pm this is another museum that’s always free (with a suggested donation of 2 pesos). No other person, besides Mother Theresa perhaps, has amassed such a devoted and loyal following as Eva Peron and you cannot come to Buenos Aires without paying some homage to her. Even today she is remembered by the Peronists as a woman worthy of sainthood. There is even a Catholic sect native to the city that feels so strongly about it that they picket the archdiocese every week to have her canonized. To come to Buenos Aires and not pay any attention to Eva would be like going to London and not at least driving by Buckingham Palace.
But if you’re not the museum type, don’t worry, Buenos Aires itself is an ever changing canvas, displaying the works of some of the most respected and famous graffiti artists in South America. Unlike in the U.K. and the U.S.A., graffiti artists here in Argentina are not criminals and are therefore freer to develop and display their art for everyone to see. To see some of the best wall art in town (for free) head over to the Palermo neighborhood and start walking around.
~Alexandra
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