Promoting and celebrating Costa Rican artistic talent is the main purpose of the 2025 National Visual Arts Salon (SNAV), an exhibition opening at the Costa Rican Art Museum (MAC), in its fifth edition, this Thursday, May 22, at 7 p.m., at its facilities in La Sabana Metropolitan Park.
- Inauguration on Thursday, May 22, 7 p.m., at MAC facilities
- Exhibition includes 50 selected works by 45 artists, curated through an open call that received 260 submissions
Promoting and celebrating Costa Rican artistic talent is the main purpose of the 2025 National Visual Arts Salon (SNAV), an exhibition opening at the Costa Rican Art Museum (MAC), in its fifth edition, this Thursday, May 22, at 7 p.m., at its facilities in La Sabana Metropolitan Park.
This initiative continues the legacy of the National Plastic Arts Salons held in the country between 1972 and 1993 and reaffirms the institutional commitment to valuing and making current artistic practices visible.
The 2025 National Visual Arts Salon is established as a meeting platform to appreciate the diversity, richness, and complexity of artistic proposals developed in the country. Its fundamental objective is to offer a broad and representative vision of national production in the field of visual arts, within a context that brings together traditional, modern, contemporary, and hybrid formulas in artistic creation.
“The 2025 National Visual Arts Salon adapts to the expansive and multidisciplinary nature of contemporary art, recognizing transformations in languages and creative processes. It is a space where traditional, modern, contemporary, and hybrid formulas converge in the creation and conceptualization of visual arts, and our goal is to promote this diversity and inclusion,” stated MAC curator María José Chavarría.
The exhibition, composed of 50 selected works by 45 artists, was curated through an open call process that received 260 applications. The selection was made by a jury composed of Esteban Calvo Campos, director of MAC; Sofía Villena Araya, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC); and Luis Fernando Quirós, independent researcher. Both guest specialists were chosen for their experience and knowledge in the field of visual arts. Their involvement ensured a transparent, professional curatorial process, sensitive to the dynamics of contemporary art.
Unlike the technical division applied in former National Salons, this 2025 edition organizes the works into three main categories: two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and other media. This classification—which will determine the recognitions within the exhibition—allows for the inclusion of a multiplicity of languages such as painting, installation, ceramics, printmaking, photography, and spatial interventions, offering a more open and representative proposal of current production.
The 2025 National Visual Arts Salon can be visited free of charge at the Costa Rican Art Museum, located in La Sabana Metropolitan Park, from Tuesday to Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The MAC Education Department will offer guided tours and free workshops aimed at students and various organized groups within the framework of the exhibition. Interested parties can request information and coordinate their visit by writing to the email: coordinacion.educacion@mac.go.cr
According to MAC, starting with the previous edition, this competition is organized openly and biennially under Executive Decree No. 43132-C.
