The Museo de Arte de Ponce was founded in 1959 by Luis A. Ferré (1904-2003), a leading figure in the economic, political and cultural life of Puerto Rico and a great lover of music and the arts.

The Museum became an important centre for European culture in the Caribbean and at the time of its opening presented a comprehensive survey of Western art organised by schools (Italian, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, English, French, North American and Puerto Rican), with the European holdings constituting the core of the collection.

In 1963 Ferré acquired one of the collection’s great masterpieces of British painting, Burne-Jones’s The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, a monumental reflection on Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. He also acquired Flaming June by Frederic Lord Leighton, a homage to beauty and the Museum’s most famous painting.

The collection of the Museo de Arte de Ponce now numbers around 3,800 works spanning the 14th to the 21st centuries and includes examples of Italian and Spanish Baroque art, Pre-Raphaelite painting and contemporary Latin American work.