Noche de los Museos

Last Satrurday night was the annual "Noche de los Museos" (Night of the Museums) in Buenos Aires, a night when all the museums in the city--some 150--stay open until two in the morning.  At around midnight I met some friends at the MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericana Buenos Aires/Latin American Art Museum, Buenos Aires), and was stunned to find a line outside waiting to get in, and more stunned when I started following the line toward the end, and followed it to the end of the block, turned the corne, all the way down the next block, and around the corner again. We waited half an hour to get in, to see a great collection of Latin American modern art and a special Andy Warhol exhibit, and for the experience of being in an art museum with a crowd of people at two in the morning.  It was a great representation of porteños (as residents of Buenos Aires, a port city, are called). 

The city is wonderfully literate and cultural.  On my first day here I saw leather-bound copies of Dickens, in translation, being sold from a news stand.  Walking down Aveninida Corrientes, (Buenos Aires´ Broadway; off-beat plays here are refered to as off-Corrientes) and being papered with flyers for theater openings, one friend of mine commented on how nice it is not having to go and find these sort of things, as he´s struggled to do in other cities.

And, the city really likes to stay up late.  Dinner is never before 8:30, everyone´s advice has been not to go out to clubs before 3am, and one of our program coordinators, a porteña, said it doesn´t even qualify as a late night unless you stop for breakfast on your way home to bed.