Shimmering and hovering over a busy Mexico City intersection like a newly arrived UFO — one that somehow bears a cargo of priceless, ancient Earthly art — the futuristic Museo Soumaya opened in the city’s tony Polanco neighborhood earlier this year.
The privately owned museum was originally founded in 1994 in a former paper factory in the San Angel district. The new, six-story facility, sheathed in a shiny skin of aluminum hexagons, was constructed as part of the Plaza Carso development at an estimated cost of more than $70 million by the richest man in the world, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, and his Carlos Slim Foundation.
It boasts a collection of more than 66,000 artworks, ranging from pre-Hispanic, colonial-era and modern-day Mexican paintings, sculptures, coins and applied arts and design to European works dating as far back as the 15th century.
Slim and his late wife, Soumaya, for whom the museum was named, are said to have been great fans of 19th century French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It comes as no surprise, then, that the new museum claims to hold the world’s largest collection of casts of the artist’s sculptures outside France and is also the largest private collection of his works anywhere.
Accordingly, I began my recent tour of the Museo Soumaya in its Rodin-rich indoor sculpture garden, housed in an expansive, naturally lighted gallery on the top floor.
The gallery, which also features 19th and 20th century sculptures by other Continental noteworthies such as Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali, is reached by a ramp from the fifth floor. (Levels one through five are reachable by both speedy elevator and gently curving ramp, but visitors are encouraged to ride the former to the top and wind their down through successive floors via the latter.)
Photography and filming in the sculpture garden was not permitted — or at least this is what I surmised from my rusty translation of what I took to be an admonishment from an extremely youthful security guard — but I encountered no problems when snapping and shooting away on lower floors.
And there was plenty worth recording. On the fifth floor, indigenous Mexican art was represented by a small collection of pre-Columbian sculpture and decorative art, as well as much more modern works by the likes of Diego Rivera. One floor below, Hall Four houses European and Mexican landscapes and works by cutting-edge artists of various eras such as Dali, Joan Miro, Vincent van Gogh and El Greco.
On the third floor, I found not a few colonial-era, religious works dating from Mexico’s “New Spain” days. I lingered over a mannequin-like, life-size and rather gory wooden sculpture of a bloodied, half-naked male saint, fascinated by the gruesome work’s stark contrast to its antiseptic surroundings.
Floor two was distinguished by the applied arts, such as furnishings and fashion, while the first story (to Americans, the second floor) displayed what’s said to be the world’s largest collection of pre-Hispanic and colonial Mexican coins.
In addition to its galleries, the Museo Soumaya offers all the usual museum extras, such as a gift shop, restaurant and cafe, library, auditorium and study and reflection spaces. Outside, an expansive set of concrete front steps, spilling down from the sparkling silver museum to busy Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Boulevard below and crammed with excited, garrulous teen and tween visitors, has become an energetic new public gathering space.
The Museo Soumaya at Plaza Carso is open daily from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Admission is free. (Note: Visitors headed to the Museo Soumaya at Plaza Carso should not confuse it with the museum’s earlier location, at Plaza Loreto in San Angel, which is still open and serves as a second campus.)
For more, visit www.soumaya.com.mx.