Map - Botero Museum (Museo Botero)

The Botero Museum also known as Museo Botero is a museum located in Bogotá, Colombia. It houses one of Latin America's most important international art collections. It sees over 500,000 visitors annually, and of those 2,000 students per month. Being in La Candelaria neighborhood of Bogotá, the museum is in close proximity to other important landmarks like the Luis Ángel Arango Library and the Gold Museum of Bogotá.

Since the late 1960s, Colombian artist Fernando Botero had been a noted art collector. Initially of pre-Columbian pieces, later of colonial art and more recently of drawing, painting and universal modern sculpture. Until 1999, all of his collections were scattered throughout his properties in New York, Paris, Monte Carlo and Pietrasanta, as well as in a Swiss bank deposit in Bogotá.

Since the mid-1990s, Botero had raised the possibility of donating his entire art collection to the Museum of Antioquia in Medellín. However, the slowness in making decisions by the Antioquia authorities led him to accept the proposal of the then mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, to donate his collection to Bogotá.

In the year of 2000, the Colombian artist Fernando Botero donated 208 art pieces, 123 of his own making and 85 of other international artists, to the Bank of the Republic. The museum is administered by Banrepcultural. With this collection, the Botero Museum was founded in the neighborhood of La Candelaria, the historic center of Bogotá, in a colonial mansion that was acquired by the Bank of the Republic and made suitable to house the art collection by Fernando Botero himself. Since November 1, 2000, the museum has been open to the public free of charge.

In the same year, Botero's collection arrived in Colombia after an exhibition at the Fundación Santander Central Hispano in Madrid (Spain). After donating these works to Bogotá, at the request of the Antioquia authorities, the artist also decided to donate a significant set of pieces of his authorship to the Museum of Antioquia, in addition to a set of sculptures for the Botero Plaza (in front of said Museum), in Medellin. Although most of the collection of international artists had been donated by Botero to Bogotá, he decided to put together a new set of about 21 pieces (Matta, Lam, Stella, Rodin, among others), to donate to the Museum of Antioquia.