Museo de Arte Moderno

The Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM) is a museum dedicated to modern Mexican art located in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City.

The museum is part of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura and provides exhibitions of national and international contemporary artists. The museum also hosts a permanent collection of art from Remedios Varo, Gelsen Gas, Frida Kahlo, Olga Costa, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Leonora Carrington, Rufino Tamayo, Juan Soriano, and Vicente Rojo Almazán.

Background
A forerunner of MAM called the National Museum of Plastic Arts, was created in 1947 by Carlos Chávez. This first museum was located inside the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

In 1953, Carmen Barreda, then director of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana and later the first director of MAM from 1964 to 1972, founded a board tasked with building a museum to preserve, study and disseminate the modern art of Mexico. This project took more than ten years to materialize.

Building
The museum building was based on the design of the architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Carlos A. Cazares Salcido (Professor at the University of Sonora), in collaboration with Rafael Mijares Alcérreca. A part of the original project, which included an auditorium, library and wineries, was never completed.

The gardens and walkways were designed by Juan Siles, with the direction of the artist Helen Escobedo.

Collections


The museum focuses on displaying modern Mexican art, mainly from the decade of 1930 onwards. Within its permanent exhibition are works of several great Mexican masters of the period, such as: Frida Kahlo, Julio Castellanos, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Emir Jair, Roberto Montenegro, José Clemente Orozco, Louis Henri Jean Charlot, Juan Soriano, Juan O'Gorman, Diego Rivera, Jesús Guerrero Galván, María Izquierdo, Rufino Tamayo, Raúl Anguiano, Federico Cantú, Carlos Orozco Romero, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Ricardo Martínez de Hoyos, Jorge González Camarena, Guillermo Meza, Francisco Corzas, Leonora Carrington, Alfredo Zalce, Remedios Varo, Agustín Lazo, Ángel Zárraga, Gerardo Murillo, José Chávez Morado, Mathías Goeritz, Gunther Gerzso, Manuel Felguérez, Abraham Ángel, Pedro Coronel, Luis López Loza, Francisco Toledo, Francisco Zúñiga, Pedro Friedeberg, Luis Ortiz Monasterio, Feliciano Béjar, Rosa Castillo y Mardonio Magaña. Like other Mexican art museums, the MAM has a very wide collection of modern and contemporary Mexican art, which by limitations of physical space is known by means of temporary exhibitions.

The museum's lobby and gardens are adorned with sculptures by great national and international artists. Among nationals represented are Gelsen Gas, Germán Cueto, Mathias Goeritz, Estanislao Contreras and Manuel Felguérez.

The theme of the museum mainly covers what is known as the Escuela Mexicana de Pintura and the Generación de la Ruptura. Exhibitions of international contemporary art are also presented.

The museum has under its shelter an important collection of works by the great Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo.

Rooms
The museum has four rooms that are named after different personalities of the Mexican cultural environment of the twentieth century: Xavier Villaurrutia, Carlos Pellicer, Antonieta Rivas Mercado, and José Juan Tablada. It also features the Fernando Gamboa Gallery.

The museum's permanent collection is on display in room "C" of the main building, on the first floor.