Costa Rica Guide
San José
Museo de Arte Costarricense
Opening time: Tues– Fri 9am–5pm, Sat-Sun 10am–4pm
Price: $5, $3 students, free Sun 10am–2pm
Website: www.musarco.go.cr
The bright white Neocolonial edifice of the old air terminal at the eastern end of Parque la Sabana has been converted into the attractive Museo de Arte Costarricense, with a fine collection of mainly twentieth-century Costa Rican paintings. Highlights among the permanent exhibits include the outstanding landscapes of Teodorico Quirós, with their Cézanne-inspired palettes of russets and burnt siennas, along with Enrique Echandi, Margarita Berthau, abstract painter Lola Fernández and a scattershot selection of foreign artists including Diego Rivera and Alexander Calder. The remarkable Salon Dorado upstairs features four full walls of bas-relief wooden carvings overlaid with sumptuous gold, portraying somewhat idealized scenes of Costa Rica's history since the Spanish arrived. On the western wall are imagined scenes from the lives of the indigenous peoples, followed on the north wall by Columbus's arrival, to which the indigenous peoples improbably respond by falling to their knees and praying solemnly. Other golden representations include the Costa Rican agrarian gods of horses, oxen and chickens, and an image of this very building when it was San José's airport, little biplanes buzzing around it like mosquitoes.