Museo Histórico Sarmiento

This guide to the Museo Histórico Sarmiento in Buenos Aires starts with a house that cannot agree on its own birthdate, and moves through the private world of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the schoolteacher's son from provincial San Juan who became president and spent his years in office building classrooms. You'll hear about his granddaughter Eugenia Belín Sarmiento, trained by her painter aunt, who set up her easel in front of him again and again to catch his face in loose impressionist strokes. The rooms hold his presidential sash, his book Facundo, and one particular canvas from 1884 worth lingering over.