Opening of Museo Jumex

Mexico City

Mexico City is blessed with a number of great contemporary art museums; Museo Tamayo, whether or not it ever expands, in Chapultepec Park; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) on the campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in the south; smaller institutions like Museo Experimental El Eco on Reforma and the non-profit Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS) in Polanco-however, as a civic point of interest and a feat of twenty-first century architectural showmanship, it's hard to rival this corner of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, where the Museo Jumex now sits opposite Carlos Slim's eccentrically hubristic Museo Soumaya, which opened in 2011. Indeed, probably the best sight provided by Lopez's new museum this weekend was the picture of the Soumaya, in all its tiled mushroom cloud grandiosity, framed by the outlook of the Jumex's first floor terrace, where the public programs were held (a roundtable on the role of the private museum, a talk between Hans Ulrich Obrist and the architect, and a performative lunch). The city block is like a kernel of an Arabian upstart in the New World: two of the most moneyed private museums anywhere, sprouted beside one another on a commercial thoroughfare en route to becoming a miracle mile. LINK Museo Jumex