The National Art Gallery

The National Art Gallery houses collections of different forms of art spanning 7,000 years of work by Honduran artists, from paleolithic times to today.

How to get to the Gallery

The Gallery is located at the very heart of the capital city, Tegucigalpa.  It is on a small plaza know as Plaza La Merced, next to the building that houses the National Congress.  Once you are in downtown Tegucigalpa, the National Gallery is within short walking distance (the Plaza Morazán is a good nearby reference point, but the Plaza La Merced or the Congress are even better)

The National Art Gallery

The 350-year-old building were the National Art Gallery resides has a history all of its own and has been connected to Honduran art and education for more than 150 years.   Click here to learn more.

Water well in the Gallery's central patio

Exhibits

Palaeolithic cave paintings and sculptures

The Gallery has several life-size reproductions of paintings on cave walls and sculptures that can be found in different places across Honduras , as well as monolithic stone sculpture of a chrysalis, which was found in one of the more remote areas of the country.

Life-size reproduction of paleolithic carvings in stone,
approximately 7,000 years old, from southwestern Honduras.

Pre-Columbian stone sculpture and pottery

On display are numerous pieces of sculpture and pottery, mainly from the ancient Maya culture, including highly ornamented and painted vase, pots, plates, clay whistles, masks, and funerary artefacts.   Most of these pieces are over 1000 years old.

Precolombian pottery on exhibit

Religious Colonial Paintings

Many religious painting were carried out by local or Central American artists (many of them anonymous) for convents and churches during the XVII and XVIII centuries.   The Gallery has a collection of such paintings, amongst them three by the most highly recognized Honduran colonial painter, José Miguel Gómez

A collection of religious paintings by colonnial Honduran artists is on exhibit

José Miguel Gómez

[--- Autor ---]

Religious Art in Silver

Silver works of art once used by the Catholic Church, mainly in Tegucigalpa 's Cathedral.   These works of art were made by skilled local silversmiths using techniques such as engraving and repoussage.

Contemporary Honduran Art

The second level of the Gallery is devoted to display of works of art by Honduran artists from the XX century.

José Antonio Velázquez	José Antonio Velázquez
Moisés Becerra	Benigno Gómez

Events

The Gallery has exhibition halls available for temporary exhibitions by artists who wish to present their most recent work, conferences, and concerts.

Contact

The building was originally erected in 1654 to house a convent for the Order of Nuestra Señora de la Merced.   It was constructed and according to the classical colonial Spanish design: a single-storey structure of adobe walls, roofed with clay shingles, with four corridors facing into and enclosing a rectangular yard.

The convent was run independently by friars of the Order of Mercy until 1845, when one of the priests, José Trinidad Reyes, used it to start an educational society following a request from the mayor of the Tegucigalpa.   The effort was successful and two years later the society was transformed into a university by the President of the Republic, Juan Lindo.

Unfortunately, the role of home to the university took its toll on the building and by 1857 restoration was necessary.   The restoration took place in 1864, with the addition of a second level to the structure and stone balconies imported from Europe placed on the façade.  This set the building's appearance that remains mainly unaltered even today.

The building would house the National University and a highschool for boys until 1968, then a workshop for the National School of Art until the mid 1980's.   After a second restoration in 1985, it was home to the Museo Nacional (National Museum).

In 1994, a group of private Honduran citizens started FUNDARTE, a foundation focused on promoting Honduran art and culture to the general public.  FUNDARTE secured the use of the building and reconditioned it to house the Galería Nacional de Arte (National Art Gallery).   The Gallery opened to the public in July of 1996.