The Museo delle Culture di Lugano (MUSEC) was opened on 23 September 1989 with the aim of preserving most of the ethnic art collected by Serge Brignoni and coming in particular from the Far East, India, South-East Asia, Indonesia and Oceania. Since then, the museum has had the honour of receiving numerous other prestigious collections of ethnic and oriental art, photography, contemporary and applied art. Works donated or deposited at MUSEC have been or will be the protagonists of dedicated temporary exhibitions. The museum was founded as the Museum of Extra-European Cultures, in 2007 it was renamed "Museo delle Culture" and since 2017 "MUSEC: Museo delle Culture". It is housed in the central Villa Malpensata, with access possible both from Via Mazzini and from Riva Caccia.

As of 1 January 2019, the Museo delle Culture (MUSEC) is entrusted to a Foundation that ensures its operation, while maintaining its identity, autonomy and image. The "Fondazione culture e musei (FCM)" allows for a more effective management, capable, thanks also to the renovated Villa Malpensata premises, of generating further synergies and economies of scope and of intensifying interaction with the territory and the public. MUSEC will thus benefit from countless advantages, which will allow it to continue and improve the work carried out so far, in all areas of its countless activities.

In 2017, MUSEC moved to Villa Malpensata. The Villa was built by the Caccia family in the mid-eighteenth century according to the style that at that time characterized the monumental and scenic rearrangement of the banks of the great alpine lakes. Used from 1893 onwards as a museum, from 1973 it became the permanent seat of the art museum and temporary exhibitions of various kinds.

The restoration designed in 2014 to give MUSEC a larger and more central location involved, in addition to the main building, both the two buildings flanking it to the north - intended for offices and the Research and Documentation Centre - and the terraced garden to the south, reorganized to house the MUSEC's outdoor spaces and the raised terrace that leads to the new main entrance. All the spaces are rearranged according to international climatic and museum-technical standards and equipped with the best safety conditions.

Since its opening to the public on September 23, 1989, and until 2016, the Heleneum was the seat of MUSEC. The Heleneum is a villa on the shores of Lake Lugano built between 1930 and 1934 on the architectural model of the "Petit Trianon" in Versailles by Hélène Bieber, a strong-willed cosmopolitan lady who wanted to transform it into a centre for social and cultural entertainment and who lived there until 1967. Especially because of the economic crisis of the 1930s, Hélène Bieber failed in her intentions and the Heleneum remained a sparsely inhabited dwelling until, in 1969, it was bought by the Municipality of Castagnola, now a district of the City of Lugano.

From 1969 to 1971 the Heleneum was the venue for the piano courses held by Carlo Florindo Semini, Franco Ferrara and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. From 1971 to 1973, the villa hosted the summer courses and seminars of the Ticino Institute of High Studies, directed by Elémire Zolla, which brought together important scholars of different disciplines on the themes of religious knowledge.

Later, until 1976, the Heleneum was the seat of the Centre for Semantic and Cognitive Studies of the Dalle Molle Institute, which operated in the field of artificial intelligence, at that time in its early days, and which organized various seminars attended by scholars and researchers from all over the world. The villa was finally the kindergarten of Castagnola and was used as a set for film productions in which Bruno Ganz and Aldo Fabrizi, among others, took part.

The Museo delle Culture conserves most of the ethnic art that Serge Brignoni collected between 1930 and 1985. The collection shows the link between the creative forms of the "South Seas" culture and the artistic Avant-Garde of the 19th century that were inspired by those objects. The collection reflects Brignoni's selection of well-crafted objects that show an appreciation of art forms from a very different culture. The genres and the geographical origins of the Brignoni collection works are similar to those found in leading European, North American and Australian collections from the first half of the 20th century. Moreover, the collection includes all of the areas that are considered fundamental for a contemporary collection of the time.^{[citation needed]}