MUSEU DE ARTE DA PAMPULHA, Belo Horizonte

The Pampulha Museum of Art, formerly the Pampulha Casino, an integral part of the Pampulha Architectural Complex, focuses on varied artistic trends in exhibitions, research, and conceptualization. Its collection includes works of contemporary Brazilian art. It is one of the buildings built by architect Oscar Niemeyer and engineer Joaquim Cardoso around the Pampulha lagoon in the Jardim Atlantico neighborhood of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, at the request of then mayor Juscelino Kubitschek in the early 1940s. The building is part of the Pampulha Architectural Complex, which is complemented by the São Francisco de Assis church, the Pampulha Dance House, and the Yacht Club. It was the first building of the complex to be built.

As soon as it was opened, the city's first casino started attracting gamblers from all over Brazil, transforming Belo Horizonte's night life. Since the person in charge of the house was Joaquim Rolla, the same manager of the Urca Casino, in Rio de Janeiro, and the Quitandinha Palace Casino, in Petrópolis, the casino brought to Belo Horizonte some of the biggest international musical attractions. The glory days of the Pampulha Casino were short-lived. On April 30, 1946, during the government of General Gaspar Dutra, gambling was forbidden throughout Brazil. It started operating as a museum in 1957, when it was known as the "Crystal Palace".

Burle Marx designed the outdoor gardens, which are decorated by three sculptures. Since its renovation in 1996, its facilities include a library, a souvenir store, a café, and multimedia rooms.

MAP has a collection of 1,400 works, among which are exhibitions of Brazilian Contemporary Art, which focus on various artistic trends. One of the highlights of the collection are the works by Guignard. Its collection includes works by several artists such as Oswaldo Goeldi, Fayga Ostrower, and Anna Letycia, works by modernists such as Di Cavalcanti, Livio Abramo, Bruno Giorgi, and Ceschiatti, and by contemporaries like Antonio Dias, Frans Krajcberg, Ado Malagoli, Iberê Camargo, Tomie Ohtake, Ivan Serpa, Milton Dacosta, Alfredo Volpi, and Franz Weissmann, among others.

In seven decades of operation, the museum has never undergone major renovations, even with infiltration problems that date back to the Pampulha dam burst in 1955. In 2016, the Municipal Culture Foundation announced that in July the MAP would be closed to begin a major renovation throughout the building, lasting two years and costing R$4.2 million.