Museum of Fine Arts of Badajoz

The Museum of Fine Arts of Badajoz, with a hundred years of history, is provincially owned, being part of the Area of Culture and Sports. The integration of the museum within this structure guarantees the sustainability of the cultural policies to be developed as well as its budget for the maintenance of its activity, which has turned it into one of the museums of Extremadura with the greatest regional, national and international projection.

The confluence of several factors made possible the creation of the Museum of Fine Arts of Badajoz in 1919. The favorable conscience of an influential cultural and artistic sector in the capital of Badajoz, as well as the political will of the Provincial Council and the City Council of the city coincided with the legal opportunity that supposed the Royal Decree of July 24, 1913 of the Ministry of Public Instruction ordering that in all the provincial capitals where it did not exist a Provincial Museum of Fine Arts was created and installed, starting the initiative of the painter and professor of the School of Arts and Trades of Badajoz Adelardo Covarsí Yustas, who would become the first director of the museum, performing these functions until 1951.

Thus we can read in the Minutes of the Plenary of the Deputation of August 5, 1919, being President of the Corporation D. Antonio Sánchez Agudo, the following:

Given account of the memory formulated by D. Adelardo Covarsí for the installation in the Provincial Palace of a Museum of Fine Arts and in the premises of the Mixed Commission of Recruitment, the Deputation agreed to approve it and to proceed to its installation in that one as long as it does not interrupt the operations of annual revision, to which end, at the corresponding time, the works of art will be removed so that they do not suffer damage and on the basis that they do not cause expenses to the provincial treasury, nor is a porter appointed for the same, a position that will be carried out by those of the Deputation, appointing the author of the report, the laureate painter D. Adelardo Covarsí, as director of the same. Adelardo Covarsí... 1

The first three rooms of the museum will open their doors to the public for the first time on January 4, 1920 on the first floor of the current Provincial Palace.