Terry Regional Museum of Painting

A Fine Arts in front of the square in Tilcara

Right in front of Tilcara's main square, overshadowed by the tall tents of the fair that took over the town's main plot, an old mansion awaits the visit of the most curious and, of course, the most attentive traveler. 

José Antonio Terry, son of a historic Argentinean Minister of Finance, decided to settle there at the beginning of the 20th century with his beautiful wife.

The rooms on the first floor show his artistic evolution. Of the collection, the nudes from his first period, when he traveled to Europe to perfect his art, stand out.

The works in the main room perhaps reveal his peak, when he portrayed the local Puna people and their customs. The faces are authentic, unique and highly expressive.

His self-portrait with lens and pipe shows an overwhelming personality, which allowed him to overcome his physical disability and transcend through his paintings; José, as well as his two sisters, also artists, suffered from deafness since birth.

In addition to his facet as a master painter, there are still many works that his spirit of solidarity made possible in Tilcara; among them, the creation of the Terry Athletic Club, perhaps the only one in the world to be founded by a painter. José was able to provide it with a basketball court with a mosaic floor, something unique in the puna at the time? After his death, his heirs continued to help the club, until inconsistencies in the rendering of accounts brought the club to an end. A symbol of our Argentina.

In the upstairs atelier, Terry's utensils are displayed, as well as other great works of his manufacture. The furniture of his time is also admirable.

Decades later, when the house was converted into a museum, the neighboring property was added to the temporary exhibition center. There we were lucky enough to visit the exhibition "Museo en la Frontera".

The current director of the institution, Juan Muñoz, decided to honor the first person to occupy that position, Félix Leonardo Pereyra, with an exhibition of drawings made by children from Yavi and La Quiaca in 1964. The former director had urged the students of the frontier public schools to draw their environment, and those works were kept in the museum's archive for half a century as part of its heritage. In mid-2020 the discovery of those drawings shocked Muñoz, to such an extent that he decided to mount an exhibition with those small masterpieces of those great children, who unknowingly provided their naive but profound testimony of their time. The perfection of the strokes, the childlike sensitivity of the faces of the drawn characters, the surprising precision of the sketches of the Church of Yavi and the railway bridge that joins La Quiaca with Villazón (Bolivia) move the visitor. And much more when hearing, from their descendants and acquaintances, the misfortunes that so many of them suffered with the passing of time.

We did the whole tour with the valuable guidance of Adrián, one of those agents committed to their job that generate gratitude and recognition of every museum lover.