Rufino Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art

This museum, an icon of contemporary architecture in Mexico, houses among its walls more than just art: a history related both to the economic political changes that were taking place in the country, and to the intense debate around the "intrusion" of the private initiative in the management of national culture.

 

Considered one of the great works built by the wonder duo formed by Teodoro González de León and Abraham Zabludowsky, the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art has a story worth telling.  There are those who consider that with this space, the architects reached their project maturity with a modern homage to pre-Hispanic architecture and its monumentality, as well as turning the museum into a new lay temple so longed for by the political class of the moment. However, in the early 1980s, it did not have sufficient resources to continue to sponsor the cultural discourse that strengthened it because of the economic crisis inherited from previous governments. It was at this time that the private initiative took the reins of the problem and was in charge of building one of the most important museums in Mexico City to this day.

Located in the area of Chapultepec, which at that time was considered the second most relevant museum circuit in the city, neighboring famous venues such as the National Museum of Anthropology and on a piece of land donated by the federal government, the Tamayo Museum was born as a result of the efforts of the Oaxaqueño painter himself to have a suitable place to exhibit his work. It was during the government of José López Portillo that the project was finally given the green light but there was a complication: the national coffers did not have enough to finance it. In this way, two were responsible for getting the work to be realized and with it an agreement never before seen on financing the culture in Mexico.

The renowned Alfa de Monterrey Group, heir to a business tradition that went back almost a century, and the televisa company led at the time by "the tiger" Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, were the ones who took care to contribute the money to the museum was a reality. The Alfa Group was already a great collector of Tamayo, so he joined his partner Televisa in an agreement under which Alfa would finance the construction and Televisa would take care of its administration. In this way, the museum became a sign of a process of political economic change that was taking place in the country and was at the center of discussions around the "intrusion" of private initiative in the management of national culture.

Construction began in 1980 and some sources indicate that architects visited around sixty museums in different parts of the world to decide what kind of light they would use, to verify the dimensions of modern art rooms, as well as how to transit through them. The building had to fulfill the dual function of combining the aesthetic and utilitarian, in addition to taking into account the recipient, which from the beginning was considered to be a mass audience with little or almost zero relation to the new trends of art.

In this way and with the characteristic seal of these architects "the large concrete structures merge with the slopes, the interior space with the exterior, the mullions and the giant pergolas become the permeable limits of the new temples lay people[…]." With stepped shapes, solid platform sequences and the material used itself, a cult-arqititonic texture is achieved that, according to the specialists, facilitates the encounter between architecture and emotion. Its enclave in the forest of Chapultepec intensifies the dimensions of the structure and also remembered those pre-Hispanic constructions lost among the vegetation.

The new place was inaugurated on May 29, 1981 and during its early years of operation housed the work of national artists such as Tamayo and Rivera but also of renowned foreign painters such as Picasso, Matisse and David Hockney. Unsurprisingly, all these exhibitions featured Televisa's large advertising apparatus, which advertised them in its various radio and television spaces at the hours of the greatest audience, as well as in news and print. Everything seemed to be going very well, but the Alpha Group, miroured in financial trouble, was unable to maintain its commitment to sponsor the venue and withdrew. Azcárraga Milmo remained in charge of the cultural company.

The disagreements between Tamayo and "El Tigre" Azcárraga began to surface mainly because the painter was in constant disagreement with the exhibitions that were mounted despite their success among the Mexican public. In addition, he wanted to have more weight in decision-making because until that moment, it was Azcárraga who decided the themes and artists that were presented in the museum. The conflicts with the artist and the threats of Tamayo that included "periodicazos", attempts at hunger strikes, calls to the new President Miguel de la Madrid, among others, resulted in Televisa announcing his retirement from the museum on May 23, 1986, went on to belong to the National Institute of Fine Arts.

The lack of funds and the disorganization of those who took charge of it made for decades the museum was only a shadow of what it was in its early life. It was likely to only be restored 30 years later, in 2014 when once again the vast rows of people were seen among the trees surrounding the museum, eager to attend Yayoi Kusama's Infinite Obsession exhibition. The massification of culture once again provoked controversy and made its own in the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art.