5 moments to meet… Jumex Museum

By Sybaris

As Claire Bishop mentions in her dazzling essay Radical Museology, during the 21st century, museum proposals around the world come mainly from private initiative. In that sense, museums have been very important in defining a term that surrounds us: contemporaneity. Inaugurated in November 2013, the Jumex Museum is one of the main contemporary art museums not only in Mexico, but in all of Latin America. Here we recover 5 outstanding moments that have marked its history.

1. Architecture

Contemporary art museums are not only spaces that exhibit pieces. Before anything else, they have become places of architectural experimentation. The Jumex Museum was designed by David Chipperfield, one of the most renowned architects of today. This was his first job in Latin America. Located in Polanco in Mexico City, the museum offers outstanding functional solutions. Besides that the building projects a dazzling aesthetic image.

2. Collection

In addition to establishing itself as one of the main exhibition spaces for contemporary art in Latin America, the Jumex Museum (promoted by its owner: Eugenio López) has an enviable collection of contemporary art. Thus, their exhibitions depend not only on fashion artists, but on a careful selection product of years of research. The Jumex Museum can boast of being an institution that preserves valuable pieces for the history of the culture of humanity.

3. Education

How can a museum be turned into a space that promotes art beyond the exhibition? The Jumex Museum constantly promotes the dissemination of contemporary art courses (internal and external) and the publication of books and magazines that analyze and reflect on the phenomena of contemporary art. Likewise, conversations, colloquia and other educational programs are presented that make the word contemporary art have a breadth that not all museums conceive.

4. Exhibitions

Definitely, the Jumex Museum has screened some of the most important exhibitions of recent times in Mexico. Not without controversy, some of the most important artists that have appeared in its installations are Gabriel Orozco, Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, On Kawara, John Baldessari, Marcel Duchamp or Francis Alÿs.

5. Controversy

In 2015, the Jumex Museum would exhibit a series of pieces by Hermann Nitsch, one of the most renowned artists of today. However, some environmental groups that misinterpreted the pieces of the artist born in Vienna in 1938 pressured the museum to cancel the exhibition, arguing that the artist mistreated animals. The Museum’s communication team, as well as the curator on duty, Patrick Charpenel, did not respond in the best possible way and the exhibition was canceled. A few weeks later Charpenel resigned from office. The Jumex Museum was the topic of conversation for the main media interested in art. And not precisely for positive reasons.