Museo de Arte Hispano Fernández Blanco, Buenos Aires

The Museo de Arte Hispano Fernández Blanco is a museum of art on Suipacha street, in the Retiro neigborhood, Buenos Aires, in a large house built in the 1920s by architect Martín Noel in a neo-colonial style.

In the 20's, architect Martín Noel built for his residence the big house that nowadays houses the museum. The building has a neo-colonial style, that combines Spanish and American colonies elements.

In 1936, the town council from Buenos Aires obtained the house with an art collection of Noel, base of the "Museo de Arte Colonial" which was opened in the same place, a year later. In 1943, Isaac Fernández Blanco donated his collection to the museum, and in 1947 was named by its actual name.

Fernández Blanco was an engineer but he was very fond of the violin, and the family fortune let him had an important collection of string instruments. Later on, he extended his interest to Spanish American culture objects: silverware, religious images, paintings, furniture, books, and documents. The museum's patrimony was enriched with the donations from Celina González Garaño in 1963 (mostly silverware and paintings) and from her brother Alfredo in 1991.

The patrimony of the Fernández Blanco is considered as one of the most important in Spanish American art, mostly in silverware from Peru, and from de Río de la Plata; in Peruvian and Cuzco paintings; in Jesuit and Quito images, in Brazilian furniture and in decorative arts.
Among the smallest collections, one that stands out is the one of the tortoiseshell or horn ornamental combs that the women used to wear in the Río de la Plata in the first half of the 19th Century.