Starting this Thursday, August 23, everyone will have easy access to enjoy Costa Rican art virtually through the website ArteCostaRica.cr. This is the first Virtual Museum of Costa Rican Art, and includes works by artists from the XIX century and through the decade of 1970. “Pincel Pinacoteca” (Paint Brush Art Gallery) is the result of the work of the University of Costa Rica’s professor eme...

One of the most important places in the history of Costa Rica is the Santa Rosa Hacienda in Guanacaste, where the famous “Battle of Santa Rosa” took place back in March 20, 1856 when a troop of close to 500 Costa Ricans defeated a group of filibusters in a very short battle. The “Casona” has now become a historical museum that takes visitors into one of the most memorable chapters of the idiosy...

Children in Costa Rica are enjoy their mid-term vacation period and it is the perfect time to visit the Children’s Museum in San Jose, where a new exhibit presents 16 animatronic dinosaurs that offer an incredible Jurassic experience. Family photo booth, activities and interactive devices, complete the exhibit “Jurassic Expedition – An Adventure Among Giants - that opens today (June 30) and wil...

The Abangares Eco-Museum usually doesn’t appear in the lists of “places you must visit” in tourism sites, many people, in fact, don’t even know it exists, but it is a wonderful place full of history and that offers visitors an insight to what the Tico “Gold Fever” was like back in the late XIX century and beginning of the XX century. The museum was founded in 1991 and it stands in the same pla...

Get up close to see a heart, lungs, skull and even a brain, at the “Yo Humano: All Bodies”  exhibit at the National Gallery in Costa Rica that will be open through June 17. “With the clear objective of raising awareness among the public on the importance of the care, protection and proper use of the different structures that make up the human body, the exhibit shows how our body is formed biol...

The University of Tarapacá in Chile, confirmed the exhibition of the mummies of the Chinchorro culture at the Jade Museum in Costa Rica from May 11 to May 31. The ancient mummies of the Chinchorro culture are over 7000 years old. The Chinchorros inhabited what is now northern Chile, the coast of the Atacama Desert from Ilo in Peru all the way to Antofagasta in Chile, they lived off fishing, hun...

In the four months from December through March a total of 1,526 archaeological pieces have been returned to the National Museum voluntarily by citizens. 54 people established communication with the National Museum to return objects that they had in their possession and coordinate their return to the Museum. This historical number of returns is due to the recent actions by the Costa Rican aut...

The Jade Museum’s exhibit El Esplendor de los Castillos Medievales Catalanes” (The Splendor of the Catalan Medieval Castles) will be enriched with a special presentation on Friday, April 20 starting at 5 p.m. and through 9 p.m. In this activity visitors will have the opportunity to live a true Medieval experience with the recreation of a market of the era, decoration, recreation of jobs and cha...

In just the first three months of this 2018, the Costa Rica Investigative Police (OIJ) and the National Museum recovered 266 archaeological pieces. Alejandro Fernandez, investigator of OIJ, stated "These pieces are put on sale by collectors through websites and even through Facebook groups"; Fernandez confirmed that the number of pieces recovered so far is already higher than the total number r...

Chamanes y Espiritus: tesoros de Museo del Jade, (“Shamans and Spirits: Treasures of the Jade Museum”), is the exhibit that the Jade Museum of Costa Rica took to the Cataluña Archeological Museum in Barcelona, Spain. As part of an international agreement, the European public will now be able to appreciate this exhibit that brings the public close to religious rituals and spirits that our ances...

The art exhibit “Detrás del Portón Rojo: una visión de la erótica en el arte costarricense” (Behind the Red Gate: A Vision of the Erotic in Costa Rican Art”) is showcased at the Costa Rican Art Museum (MAC). This art movement has been present in different ways since the Pre-Columbian era in Costa Rica; the exhibit is centered in the notion of the erotic as a natural reality of the human being, ...

Visiting the Isla del Coco in Costa Rica is probably the dream of many, unfortunately just a few make this dream a reality since getting there is complicated and requires a 10-12 day expedition; this is why the University of Costa Rica and the National Museum joined efforts to bring people closer to this amazing island through an exhibit that was inaugurated on November 23 and will be available th...

The Costa Rican Children's Museum (Museo de Niños) in downtown San José, recently opened a new area for children and adults alike to learn and explore different science topics. The new space was funded by the Costa Rican State Electricity Institute (ICE) and the Foundation Fundación Ayúdenos para Ayudar, which translates to "help us to help." The foundation's mission is to run the Costa Rican S...

Costa Rica has plenty of natural treasures, most at plain sight, but the country also has its share of underwater treasures, and these are the ones that the country is striving to protect with the help of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Heritage. “Underwater cultural heritage means all traces of human existence having a cultural, historical or archaeological character ...

The Costa Rica National Museum takes you through the history of transportation in Costa Rica. Photos, historical objects and a 100 year old carriage that belonged to former President Tomás Guardia (1870-1882) offer us an idea of what life was like in this country back in the XIX century. From mules, carts and carriages, to the streetcar, cars and the construction of the train to the Atlantic...

Photo Credit: Facebook Los Jueguetes del Parqueo / illustration purposes only The movie Cars 3 was just released in theaters worldwide, and now in Costa Rica fans of this great movie can take pictures with their favorite character at the Children’s Museum in San José. Ten vehicles were transformed to look exactly like the characters in the move, Lightning McQueen, Mater, Luigi, Francesco, Gu...

Skeletal remains of Mesoamerican Indians with artificial cranial deformations and filed teeth, and who settled in Costa Rica centuries ago, are being exhibited to the public for the first time since their discovery near the Pacific coast in the northern part of the country. The temporary Jade Museum exhibition "Life and Death in the Jicaro Valley, Culebra Bay," dates the arrival of these settle...

A “barrio” is a neighborhood, and that’s the topic and inspiration of this year’s edition of Traffic Museum in Costa Rica. Barrio Lujan, Barrio Los Angeles, Barrio Amón, Barrio González Lahmann, Barrio Otoya, Barrio Escalante, Barrio San Bosco and Barrio Aranjuez; are the eight iconic San José neighborhoods chosen, and that with their architecture, tradition, characters, and history inspired te...

There is a large number of art traffickers in Costa Rica, the clandestine network of art dealers has suppliers from Turrialba, Guapiles and Guanacaste who provide them with authentic native art pieces from different eras, including and especially pre-Columbian pieces, at a cheap rate, the traffickers then sell them for much more to private collectors in other countries, some disguised as replicas,...

Costa Rica is also home to great artists in different fields. This country has great painters, and in view of the different international art exhibits that will be displayed in Costa Rica in this next few months it is important that some of his national talent is also recognized and remembered: Maternidad (Maternity) Oil Painting by Francisco Amighetti (Costa Rica) Francisco “Paco” Amighett...

“México: Identidad Fantástica” (Mexico: Fantastic Identity) is the name of the exhibition that brings together 71 paintings and photographs of the greatest exponents of Mexican art of the first half of the 20th century. Costa Ricans will be able to enjoy this great exhibition as of November 4th at the National Museum Dr. Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia in San José. The itinerant exhibit,curated b...

Things to do in Costa Rica this weekend: Saturday, October 8 If you like opera, Eugene O’Neill Theater located in the main branch of Centro Cultural in San Pedro, will kick off their Live Opera season Saturday, October 8 at 10 a.m. from The Metropolitan Opera (MetLive in HD), with the play Tristan und Isolde, and opera in three acts by German Richard Wagner and based largely on the romance b...

Source: OIJ On Friday afternoon, agents from the Office of Judicial Investigations (Spanish initials: OIJ) raided a home in San Miguel of Naranjo, a coffee-producing region located in the province of Alajuela. The raid was the culmination of a week-long investigation related to crimes against the archaeological record of Costa Rica. According to an official press release issued by OIJ, agen...

National Museum of Costa Rica By Maria Jose Brenes San Jose, Jun 22 (EFE).- The San Jose Museum Walking Tour, which goes on for less than a kilometer (about half a mile) through the Costa Rican capital, reveals the sounds, origins, use and morphology of the musical instruments that sounded in pre-Columbian communities. Under the title "Ancestral Echoes," the Central Bank Museum of Costa ...

At the Regional Museum in San Ramon, province of Alajuela, twenty works of art from the 20th and 21st centuries await visitors, who do not have the benefit of knowing either the title or authorship of the works. Visitors to this museum, which is located in a thriving agricultural region of Costa Rica, must investigate the background of the untitled works of art and make their own determination as ...

At Finca 6 in Palmar Sur of the Osa canton yesterday, President Luis Guillermo Solis and representatives from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) unveiled the official plaque commemorating the declaration of the National Park of the Stone Spheres as a World Heritage Site. The Mayor of the Osa canton and officials from the National Museum of Costa Rica we...

Source: Flickr CC The recent grand opening of the Park and Museum of the Stone Spheres and the extensive recovery and curation work of the Guayabo National Monument are the two most significant events that represent the current boom in archeological and anthropological research in Costa Rica. One of the highlights of the administration of President Laura Chinchilla has been her insistence t...

Coming at the end of March to the Osa southern region of Costa Rica, the ninth Festival of the Stone Spheres celebrates one of the most enigmatic historical and cultural mysteries of Costa Rica. The 2014 Festival of the Spheres will be held March 26 to 30 in Palmar Sur, Palmar Norte and Sierpe. Put on by the National Museum of Costa Rica, the majority of the activities will be at its new satell...

The Ministry of Cultural and Youth Affairs of Costa Rica (Spanish initials: MCJ) is reporting that the new Museum of the Stone Spheres in the southern Pacific region of Osa has been an astounding success. To encourage visitors to explore the 10 hectares where ancient indigenous tribes somehow manipulated these mysterious objects to line up in perfect sync with the sun each solstice, the MCJ will o...

They are magnificent, geometrically acute and mystifying. They are the stone spheres of Costa Rica, majestic objects patiently created by the indigenous ancestors to the boruca people who call the Osa region their home, precisely the districts of Cortes, Palmar and Sierpe in the province of Puntarenas. Just a few days ago, the Ministry of Culture in Costa Rica announced that Costa Rica's beloved s...

R.A.W. and One Love Generation partner with the Museo de Guanacaste to work on renovation and beautification projects for this historic Costa Rican landmark. On July 13th, six teen artists from One Love Generation (OLG) traveled to the City of Liberia, located on the northwestern edge of Costa Rica. Here, in partnership with RAW Tours, they created a heart opening experience and lasting impact ...

Liberia, Costa Rica – June 21st 2013: Wilkes University students arrived in Costa Rica on Monday, June 17th for a summer Ecotourism Development class, led by Dr. Andy Miller. They met up their in-country and host and coordinator, R.A.W. Tours, on Tuesday to begin their work at the Museo de Guanacaste (Guanacaste Museum). Their efforts at the museum will focus on: assisting in the creation of co...

In the past The Costa Rica Star published about Stone Spheres found in farmers fields in Costa Rica. Costa Rican archeologist Ifigenia Quintanilla confesses those mysterious pre-Columbian stone spheres found in the country's southern Pacific zone still stump her after two decades of study. The scientist has lived in Spain since 1998 but confesses her fascination with the spheres that apparen...

More than 60 sensational chairs of art are being auctioned to raise funds for the scholarship and library programs of The Women’s Club of Costa Rica. A Night at the Museum & Sensational Chair Auction takes place Saturday, September 1, 2012, from 6 to 10 pm, in the National Gallery of the Children’s Museum in San José. Fifty-five artists from the Costa Rican and ex-patriot communities have ...

The National Insurance Institute of Costa Rica is putting out to tenders contract services for the renovation and equipping of a building that will house the Jade Museum in San Jose. INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC TENDER No. 112008-UL-2012LN Contract for professional services for a turnkey project including preliminary studies, draft environmental feasibility study, development and implementatio...

The Contemporary art museum of Costa Rica based in San José is displaying works by Rebecca Alpizar in its “Para Verte Mejor” (The Better to See You With) exhibition until 4 August 2012. This exhibition explores self-portraits, the artist’s key topic, by seeking new approaches to self-representation so as to offer spectators a large panel of image readings through reflection and acquisition of i...

Workers digging a secondary drainage canal for a banana plantation in Costa Rica’s Osa canton discovered what is just the latest in series of stone spheres that raise more questions than they answer for archaeologists. Locally the stone spheres are known as Las Bolas. Over the years just over three hundred of them have been discovered across the Diqius Delta and on Isla del Cano in Costa Rica. ...

The third annual installment of the Art City Tour, sponsored by Banco Nacional, will kick off at 5:00 pm this evening in San Jose. The Art City Tour this year will be celebrated in tandem with the International Museum Day, which has been observed since 1977. This is a great introduction to a portion of the culture and arts scene in Costa Rica, and it is free for all who wish to participate. ...

Elevating the quotidian to sacred status; I see the mundane as sacred, because it really is. I see daily life as an spectacle for the soul. I perceive artistic essence in the daily rituals of the people in India. - Jenny Kozlow I see discarded objects as fragments of a culture on the brink of extinction, and yet the perennial symbols of mystic wisdom move me. - Michael Sims Jenny Kozlow ...

The National Museum, in conjunction with community associations of the Osa, Palmar and the Diquis Delta region, invite you to the VII Festival of the Stone Spheres this weekend. This is a cultural and festive event that will serve as a warm up for the future UNESCO candidacy of the magnificent National Park of the Stone Spheres of Costa Rica. The activities will start at 9:00 AM and will wrap u...