A cluster of modernist pavilions designed by Carlos Colombino brings together three perspectives on Paraguayan art: Indigenous, folk and urban. There's pre-Columbian pottery, religious carvings and wooden saints, lace and silverwork, masks and featherwork from the peoples of the Chaco and eastern Paraguay, contemporary paintings and prints, and the woodcuts from the trench newspapers of the War of the Triple Alliance. It's a surprising visit even for people who don't usually go to museums, and it leaves you with a deep sense of Paraguay's cultural diversity.

It began in the late 1970s as a private institution: in 1979 the first building went up in Isla de Francia, and in 1980 the Museo del Barro opened in San Lorenzo, founded by Ysanne Gayet, Carlos Colombino and Osvaldo Salerno. In 1983 it moved to Asunción and expanded its collection beyond ceramics; since 1988 it has been permanently housed at the Centro de Artes Visuales in Isla de Francia. The Museum of Indigenous Art pavilion was added in 1992; a tornado damaged it in 1993, and it reopened in 1995.