National Museum of Art (MUNAL)
Survey of Mexican art from 1550 to 1954, housed in the palatial former Ministry of Communications.
The National Museum of Art occupies the former Palacio de Comunicaciones y Obras Publicas on Plaza Manuel Tolsa, built between 1904 and 1911 to designs by the Italian architect Silvio Contri. Its eclectic stonework, bronze balustrades and grand double staircase were fitted out by the Florentine Coppede workshops. The Ministry of Communications left in 1954 and the building later held the National Archive; it reopened as the national art museum in July 1982 and was extensively restored between 1997 and 2000.
The permanent display follows Mexican art from about 1550 to 1954 across three floors, grouped into colonial painting, the academic nineteenth century and the modern period. It holds work by Jose Maria Velasco, Hermenegildo Bustos, Saturnino Herran, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and Maria Izquierdo, with more than 4,000 items in the collection. Manuel Tolsa's equestrian statue of Charles IV, known as El Caballito, stands in the square outside the entrance.
Highlights
- The 1911 Palacio de Comunicaciones interior, with its ceremonial double staircase
- Landscape paintings by Jose Maria Velasco of the Valley of Mexico
- Nineteenth-century academic galleries and the Saturnino Herran rooms
- El Caballito, Manuel Tolsa's equestrian statue, on the plaza outside
