Niterói · Rio de Janeiro

Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (MAC)

Oscar Niemeyer's 1996 saucer on the Boa Viagem headland — the building that put Niterói on the architectural map.

Landmark building

About the building

The MAC stands on the Mirante da Boa Viagem, a rocky point on Niterói's bayfront with Guanabara Bay on one side and the beaches on the other. Oscar Niemeyer shaped it as a single white concrete cup, 16 meters tall with a 50-meter-diameter dome, rising from an 817 m² reflecting pool and reached by a winding red-carpeted ramp. A ring of windows circles the gallery level, so the view — Rio's skyline across the bay — competes with whatever is on the walls.

Inside, the museum holds the João Sattamini collection, some 1,217 works assembled from the 1950s onward and counted among the largest contemporary art collections in Brazil. For anyone weighing Niterói as a place to live, the MAC anchors the Boa Viagem waterfront the way the Sugarloaf anchors Urca: it is the fixed image of the city.

Address: Mirante da Boa Viagem s/n, Boa Viagem, Niterói

History

Niterói invited Niemeyer in 1991, during a push to give the city a cultural identity of its own rather than living off Rio's; construction took five years and the museum opened on 2 September 1996, with the architect then in his late eighties.

It became the most famous building Niemeyer completed in his late period and the seed of the Caminho Niemeyer, the string of his works along Niterói's waterfront. Three decades on, it is still the reason most first-time visitors cross the bay.