The story
In 2000 the Colombian painter Fernando Botero gave his home country an extraordinary present. He handed over 123 of his own works, the plump, swollen figures that made him famous, and alongside them 85 pieces from his personal collection of European and American art, on strict conditions: the museum must be free, and nothing could ever be sold.
The state bank set it in a restored colonial mansion in Bogotá's old quarter, La Candelaria, around a courtyard. So a visitor moves from Botero's outsize still lifes and his rounded version of the Mona Lisa into rooms holding a Picasso, a Monet, a Renoir, a Degas and a Dalí, works most Colombians could never otherwise see up close.
Botero's gift was pointed. He wanted the collection kept together, free, and in the country he came from, and it has stayed exactly that since it opened.
