If anything lends distinction to the Villa Ocampo collection it is the balance struck by Victoria – a woman acutely interested in the newest European trends at the turn of the 20th century – between an urge to promote radical changes in the world of art and a concomitant appreciation for the paintings and sculptures inherited from her family, which were responses to the canonical works of the 19th century. The Villa Ocampo collection thus stands as a singular example of two centuries engaged in a synthesizing dialogue, in which two modes of seeing and understanding art achieve a harmonious existence together.

Among the most fascinating works in the collection is a tapestry by the Myrbor house based on a Pablo Picasso original, acquired by Victoria in 1929 in Paris. Initially, the tapestry was used as a rug in the Villa Ocampo; later, Victoria would hang it on a wall to protect it from careless smokers. Other important works include two oil portraits by Prilidiano Pueyrredón – one of Victoria’s great-grandfather and prominent politician Manuel José de Ocampo y González, the other of his wife Clara Lozano de Ocampo –, a white marble reproduction of an ancient Greek head of a woman, acquired in 1913 at the Paris Exposition, and a 1925 oil painting by the Uruguayan Pedro Figari rendered in thick brushstrokes and depicting Victoria before a background of dense, sinuous clouds.

The collection also includes several 1909 dry-point portraits by the prestigious Frenchman Helleu (the great portrait artist of the Belle Époque who created the final image of Proust), and, on a table, a tiny bronze piece by the Prince Troubetzkoy in which Victoria is depicted wrapped in a cape of chinchilla. An oil by Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret portrays a magnificent Victoria in a white outfit with a dark cape covering her shoulders. A red rose is affixed at her waist and she holds a book in her right hand.

Notable in the collection of more than 200 photographs are a portrait of Graham Green by Yousuf Karsh, a Man Ray depiction of Drieu La Rochelle, portraits of Igor Stravinsky, Virginia Woolf, and Charlie Chaplin with dedications to Victoria, several daguerreotypes and a series of photographs portraying the now-unrecognizable Buenos Aires of the early 20th century.