Unspecified/General

Instantly recognisable for its shimmering, curving facade clad in thousands of hexagonal aluminium tiles, the Museo Soumaya in the Polanco district of Mexico City is one of the most striking pieces of modern architecture in the country and houses the vast private art collection of the businessman Carlos Slim, one of the wealthiest people in the world. Named in memory of Slim's late wife, Soumaya, the museum is free to enter and displays a sprawling collection of more than sixty thousand works gathered over decades, ranging across European and Mexican art from the fifteenth century onward, with particular strengths in old master paintings, Mexican colonial and modern art, and, most famously, one of the largest collections of sculptures by the French artist Auguste Rodin outside France, alongside works by Dali and others. The present building, opened in 2011 and designed by the architect Fernando Romero, Slim's son-in-law, is a windowless, twisting tower whose six floors are reached by a spiralling ramp, the interior lit from above. The collection's breadth and the sometimes uneven nature of so large an assemblage have prompted debate among critics, but the building's bold form has made it a landmark and a popular destination, standing within the cultural cluster of Plaza Carso alongside the Jumex museum and the Inbursa aquarium. The building has become one of the most photographed pieces of modern architecture in Mexico, its sinuous, asymmetric form sheathed in some sixteen thousand mirror-like hexagonal tiles that shimmer and change with the light, an emphatic statement at the centre of the Plaza Carso development that Carlos Slim, the telecommunications magnate, built on former industrial land in Polanco. The decision to admit visitors free of charge was central to Slim's vision of the museum as a gift to the public, and the collection it houses is vast and eclectic, reflecting the personal tastes and the immense buying power of one man over decades of collecting. Its galleries range across the centuries, with European old masters, religious art from the Spanish colonial period in Mexico, nineteenth and twentieth-century Mexican painting, ivories, coins and decorative arts, but its best-known holdings are an extraordinary array of bronzes by Auguste Rodin, said to be the largest collection of the French sculptor's work outside his homeland, displayed alongside pieces by other European masters. The very scale and breadth of the assemblage, gathered rapidly and unevenly, has drawn some critical scepticism about its coherence, yet the museum's free admission, central location and arresting architecture have made it hugely popular, and it anchors a cluster of cultural institutions that has transformed this corner of the city.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Boulevard Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Mexico City, Mexico

Website: https://www.museosoumaya.org

Opening Date: 29/03/2011