National Museum of Art

The beginning of the 20th century, during the last years of the Porfiriato. It is located in Tacuba street number 8, in front of the Plaza Tolsa of Mexico City. It is the work of the Italian architect Silvio Contri, and it was built to house the Ministry of Communications and Public Works. It was one of the most important ministries of Mexico at that time. In order to achieve the development that Mexico wanted under the Porfiriato, it was necessary to be able to communicate to the country inside and outside. And the development of rail networks, and the improvement of ports for the export of goods, were fundamental. As a result, we can see that a palace was built, which has almost 17,000 square meters. It is monumental in its dimensions, with free heights, in some cases, of more than 10 meters. And it housed the functions of a secretary of state. The iron structure is covered with quarry, and to design the building, Contri was inspired by the Palazzo Strozzi, in the Italian city of Florence. It will have those characteristics that distinguish the period. In its lower body, the sillares, that is, the stone, as it is worked, is more rough or less delicate in the lower bodies, and it is more polished, finer, in the upper bodies. The ornamentations that are very characteristic of the museum are the large balustrades, which visually work wonderfully, because when you look out, you see that these balustrades that cover the windows, that protect the windows, or that are above the ledge, have a natural scale. When you stand next to them, they are much higher than the height of a normal person, about 70 meters, something like that. The use of the ironworks, which were also carried out in Italy, is very special. They have a tremendous solidity, the decorations are vegetal. The building is full of infinite elements that distinguish it. As we can see, inside this wonderful hall, the decorations that cover the ceilings, the cenefas, in some cases they are vegetal elements that could seem grotesque, in other cases they are the use of medallions and pearls that give continuity to the ribbons that end in the frames. From the 1970s, the building was used by the General Archive of the Nation, and in 1982, the enclosure opened its doors as a National Art Museum. The National Art Museum opens without occupying the entire building. The space of the Telegraphs of Mexico was still preserved. A part of the building was released, at this level where we are now. This was the direction of the museum, which is now dedicated to the library. The third floor was still occupied by other structures that had been added over almost 100 years, where there was a nursery, a dining room, and other structures that did not fulfill any function related to the museum. It was inaugurated by President José López Portillo. At the beginning, the collections came from many museums, such as the National Institute of Fine Arts, which were brought to try to make a narrative of the history of Mexican art. The Temple Mayor was recently discovered with the meeting of the Coyochaucli, and some pieces of art from the pre-Hispanic period were also brought here. When the museum is planned, a lot of work has to be done to liberate it. It's like removing all those structures to preserve the spaces, to have the spaces with the original heights, with the ones that were designed, and to have the possibility of hosting large-format works. El Acerbo del Munal includes painting, sculpture, engraving, drawing, and photography. It is grouped into three large sections, the Birenal period, the 19th century, and the 20th century. What does it mean that we can have a vision of Mexican art? To know that immense plastic that we have, from the Birenal period, the 19th century, the 20th century, is the El Munal. We have a collection of about 3,000 pieces in growth. That is, we are cataloging more pieces that have entered our collection, either through donation or acquisition. In effect, the collection is a living issue that is expanding. The works that we preserve in the rooms dedicated to the Birenal art do come from, in the vast majority, monasteries, temples, but we also have works that were part of the treasure of the Royal Pontifical University of Mexico. We have works that were hung in the Palacio Reinal, works that were inside the artists' workshops. That gives us a subtle panorama of the different uses, of the images, of the different motives and intentions that existed behind these images, and also the ways in which they were read. Luis Juárez's San Miguel Arcángel is one of the museum's most fragile pieces. It is an oil painting on wood. It was attributed to Luis Juárez in the 1980s, in the 20th century. Luis Juárez was the painter of whom it is suspected. He is the first completely New Hispanic artist to be formed with these artists who came from Spain. And this piece, due to its artistic qualities, due to the anatomical scope, due to the lightness of the cloths, due to the landscape that is behind the scene, has toured different museums in the United States. Two fundamental works from the late 18th century are the portraits of the first teachers of the Academy of San Carlos. Manuel Tolsá and Jerónimo Antonio Gil. They were made by the Valencian painter Rafael Jiménez y Planes, and in them he moves away from the Baroque New Hispanic canons. The art of the 18th century will be a hybrid between the ideas of French illustration, the ideas of French academicism, but at the same time the ideas of Italian illustration with a strong presence of the Jesuits, with all this neo-scholastic erudition of the Jesuits. So, in the 18th century, for example, there will be a great erosion of erudition in the paintings, and projects will be built where only very erudite men can decode all the symbols, not the emblematic painting, but also passionate works to produce moods, and that the image, that will be very interesting in the Jesuit projects, that the image is a detonator of transformation in the subject. In addition to protecting the largest collection known to the painter José María Velasco, in the galleries dedicated to the 19th century, there are emblematic works of painters such as Santiago Rebull, Manuel Ocaranza, and José María Obregón, among many others. The offering of Saturnino Herrán and other important artists of the 20th century are constantly requested to complement both retrospectives and some other thematic exhibitions. The piece La Ofrenda has been in venues as important as the Palace of Fine Arts, and it also traveled to Paris to be presented at the Petit Palais, as part of a retrospective exhibition of Mexican art. The Zapatista landscape of Diego Rivera is very interesting in two ways. I will start with the historical aspect of the piece, which is included in the collection of the National Institute of Fine Arts in 1973. It was acquired in a donation to the engineer Marte Gómez, and when it was acquired in 1973, only the face of the Zapatista landscape was known. This piece, dated 1915, is included in the collection of the National Institute of Fine Arts, and three years later, in 1976, when the CENCROPAM, the National Center for Conservation and Restoration, receives the piece to make its dictation and stabilize it, it finds that it is a double-visual oil. It was an extremely important discovery for the piece, not only for the aspect in which a piece had been acquired and two pieces of Diego Rivera were obtained, but it turned out that the piece, the version that is on the other side of the canvas, is La Mujer en el Pozo, which is a previous work of Diego Rivera in which he barely begins an exploration, let's say, with the Cubist period in his relationship with Picasso and Braque while he is in Paris. After this discovery, it is possible to stabilize both faces and to create a frame that allows the exhibition for both faces. The National Museum of Art, although its collection does not extend beyond 1950, seeks to integrate later practices and has sought to carry out temporary exhibitions that somehow complement what the collection itself offers. That is why, in parallel to the project of the permanent collection, it is vital to incorporate temporary exhibitions that allow the public to have these points of encounter, of contrast with what is produced inside and outside of Mexico. the National Museum of Art offers visitors concerts, film cycles, workshops for children and conferences. On the last Wednesday of each month, with the program Night of Museums, the enclosure extends its visit time from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. The Munal also has a solid academic programming. We decided that it was appropriate to completely review the museological guide. The museums were made for the artists, not mainly. What happens is that the heritage is made for everyone, it is not made for a particular group, and it is very important that we can generate an experience that is above all satisfactory, an experience that is emotional, an experience that seduces the public and that establishes a communication with the artistic objects that we guard. With this new museography project, we are trying to seek greater respect and greater contact with the building, that is, to try to touch as little as possible the walls, the ceilings, but using new technology, such as LED lighting technology. At the moment we have almost a complete level of LED lighting. So it is about finding a balance between new technologies, but always looking for respect for the original building. We have proposed a whole renovation project of the 32 rooms. We have already renovated around 8 of them. The renovation consists, on the one hand, of the revitalization of the architectural space, which is part of the experience of the work of art. The museum itself, its architecture, is a work of art. The first project of this type is José María Velasco, Territorio Ideal, which has been announced as a temporary exhibition, but will really remain a permanent exhibition. Velasco was chosen because he is the artist best represented among our heroes, of whom we have more works, and it is a link between Birenal Mexico and what will be the independent Mexico. And the idea is that this link between the second and the first level is formed. In the second level we have all the great formats of the Nubo Hispano. We finish with the Academia de San Carlos in the second level, and José María Velasco becomes this link that will later give rise to the whole tour of the 19th century, ending in the 20th century. So the idea was to bring these main pieces to our main room of the first level, having visual shots that would serve the pieces much more. The idea of making the exhibition Puro Mexicano was, to begin with, we already had the idea of renovating the warehouses. Obviously, to make this renovation, many pieces should be moved, and within this movement a curatorship was made in which it was sought that many pieces that had been very few, even never exhibited, would go to the museum rooms. This is the Bacanal by Antonio Favrez. It's a piece that hasn't been exhibited for about ten years. This is the double-sided painting of the explosion of Dr. Atle's paricutin. One of the faces hadn't been exposed for ten years. Even many of Dr. Atle's sketches were framed and are now being exhibited together. With this new project that we want to carry out, the effort will be to carry out a very rigorous investigation of each of these pieces and try to locate them and provide them with what is necessary so that they are seen in the dimensions for which they were conceived and give them importance in their forms. In this renovation, we are considering a reassembly of our own collections that implies a refreshment, let's say more than a museographic renovation, according to an experience that has to point more to enjoyment than to traditional learning. There is always a story to tell, but what we want to do now is that the stories we are telling are more enjoyable, less linear, less revisionist, and, on the other hand, less dependent on understanding the reading of the cell phone. All these paintings that we see now on white walls and that we hope will have color in the future were not paintings made just to be seen. They are works that have a story. They are works that sometimes were saved from being destroyed. They are works that are unique or that were part of great institutions of the past, and that, even for the fact of being the testimonies of a time that has remained in oblivion, they are valuable, as small time capsules that allow us to dimension and reconstruct a past of ours. The idea of all these projects is to launch the MUNAL at an international level in which there is more recognition. So that people hear more about this museum that preserves and maintains many pieces of the main works of Mexican artists in the country. We have the largest collection of all art museums in Mexico. Its importance lies in the fact that it has been and we hope to consolidate it in greater depth the center of reference of Mexican art. And also to be that interlocutor with the great museum institutions and research around the world. When it is required to present an exhibition, when it is required to investigate our artists, let us be the ones who help to establish those bridges.