Museum of Modern Art celebrates 6 decades with fully renovated premises

Mexico City. The Museum of Modern Art (MAM) will celebrate its six decades of existence on Friday 20th with the facility renovated in all its areas. The renovation was carried out in four stages and had an investment of 84 million 62 thousand 295 pesos through the Chapultepec Nature and Culture program, said Natalia Pollak, its director, in a press conference. Almost one million pesos were used to restore 35 monumental sculptures of the Sculpture Garden.

Before carrying out the interventions, “we made a diagnosis. We looked at everything with a magnifying glass. No area was left unattended, although it still needs to be maintained.” The work included everything from the restoration of its five domes to the allocation of a space for the historical archive, that is, “everything that was generated on paper,” which was found in boxes that were opened, their contents fumigated, then catalogued.

Thanks to its classification, “the National Archives recognized us as a national historical archive.” Now, it remains to be digitized so that “it is accessible to everyone,” said Pollak.

The 60th anniversary celebration also included the exhibition program Fictions of modernity, consisting of five samples, the last of which, The tuna and a light tower on a deskopened on the evening of Wednesday 18th. These are independent, but interrelated, exhibitions, said Brenda Caro, the museum’s chief curator. All the work included in the exhibitions comes from the museum’s own collection. Caro recalled that “we are the public museum that has the largest collection of works by Remedios Varo, as well as Manuel Álvarez Bravo.”

At the press conference, Pollak referred to donations of works, which can be made through the Payment in Kind program of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, or directly: “When artists come to us interested in donating works, we have a committee, first, internal, and then another from the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature.”

From 2022 to 2024, 205 works have been donated to the MAM, either through Payment in Kind or directly. “The most significant donations were from the family of painter Raúl Anguiano, consisting of 70 works, and from Rogelio Pereda and Luis Carlos Emerich, relating to artists active in the 1980s and 1990s,” Pollak explained.

The issue of the national warehouse was also discussed. The director of the MAM estimated that 20 percent of its collection of nearly 3,500 works will be transferred to the national warehouse. “We are working on the selection of works of different formats and techniques,” although she added that “here we have warehouses that have been equipped and are in optimal conditions.”

The celebrations for the museum’s six decades include the publication of a catalogue: “There was no written history of the MAM, in book form, that covered the building, the founding collections or the archives,” said Pollak.

Museum of Modern Art 60 yearswhich has a print run of two thousand hardcover copies and four different covers, contains a total of 496 pages and 250 images, and is a product of all areas of the facility, said Marlene Lelo de Larrea, deputy director of the MAM.

Over the years, the MAM has been “a scene of encounters and disagreements.” Pollak brought up the Salón Esso painting and sculpture competition of 1965: “When Fernando García Ponce and Lilia Carrillo won the painting category, a brawl broke out between groups of artists, some in favour of figurative art and others of abstract art.” He recalled that in 1988, Jorge Alberto Manrique was the protagonist of “an act of defence of artistic freedom based on the installation The Royal Royal Templeby Rolando de la Rosa, in which the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, with the face and breasts of Marilyn Monroe, scandalized the Pro Vida group and the National Union of Synarchists.” An act that led him to resign as director.

The 60th anniversary celebrations are part of a much broader public programme.