The Museo Emilio Caraffa is a fine arts museum established by the Province of Cordoba, and located…read moreon the edge of Sarmiento Park. It's close to the Palacio Ferreyra and you can get a combined ticket for both museums if you start at the Palacio Ferreyra, which I recommend. Each museum takes 1-2 hours to go through, so you can easily see both in an afternoon.
The Caraffa has mostly modern and contemporary art, with a focus on Argentine artists. When we were there in February 2015, the main exhibit was a 100-year retrospective of the museum's history, with a collection of its best-known artworks. Another exhibit featured a series of iconic, brightly colored sculptures called "La Fiesta Secreta." There was also an exhibit that seemed to be a province-wide competition of printmakers and lithographers, ranging widely in subject matter, skill level, and media.
My favorite part about this museum is actually the stairs! The stairs between levels are black and the handrails and undersides are covered in black faux fur, while the walls are a bright lime green. I don't know whether it's art or just a fun design choice, but I enjoyed that they took a functional part of the museum and made it cool and eye-catching.
The bathrooms are just OK (the soap in the ladies' room was an empty soda bottle refilled with pink soap and a hole cut in the lid), but they do at least have a whole row of stalls. There's a pretty decent gift shop that has inexpensive art postcards and books, but no English-language books that I saw.
Some of the galleries felt empty or underused, and the exhibits that had multimedia videos played the audio at a deafeningly loud volume that didn't encourage us to stay there too long. But it's a large, interesting space and your experience will probably depend on which specific exhibitions are there when you go.
Overall, maybe not something to go out of your way for on its own, but as part of a combined museum day with the Palacio Ferreyra, it's worth a visit.
