Critic's Notebook: Mexico City's new Soumaya Museum disappoints [Updated]

The new Soumaya Museum that opened in Mexico City late last month is a bit of a shock. The cause is not the building, which does add a striking profile to a redeveloping section of the city's upscale Polanco neighborhood.

New art museums pushing architectural envelopes are commonplace, and the Soumaya's eccentric, windowless, cinched-corset shape -- call it the "bustier building" -- is no different. Clad in hexagonal metal tiles, the computer-assisted design makes a techno-tizzy out of traditional Colonial Mexican, ceramic-tiled building facades.

The best news: Admission is free.

But the small shock is just how weak the museum's collection is, and how poorly the paintings, sculptures and decorative arts have been installed in the open floor plan galleries. Six big floors of displays offer, at best, less than two floors of museum-worthy art.

Actually, even that should not have been a surprise. A vanity museum, the Soumaya has been housed in a more modest space in the Coyoacán district for several years, but a sharp curatorial sensibility has never been much in evidence. If you love Salvador Dali's cheesy Surrealist bronze sculptures of the 1970s and 1980s, churned out for moneyed provincial buyers; posthumous (if authorized) casts of Auguste Rodin masterworks; or, sentimental Victorian odes to childhood innocence, carved in marble, this is the place for you.

The top floor is a veritable football field crowded with scores of examples of the stuff, each on its own white pedestal. The forest of impossible-to-contemplate material even obscures significant works, such as fine terra cottas by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875). The overhead fluorescent lighting is, well, fluorescent.

The net worth of Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim Helú, whose museum this is, is estimated by Forbes at upwards of $74 billion. (Slim is Forbes' answer to the question, "Who is the world's richest person?") The 150-foot-tall Soumaya tower is said to have cost about $70 million to build, though it's not quite finished. Young architect Fernando Romero, who formerly worked in the office of celebrated Dutch designer Rem Koolhaas, is no doubt tiring by now of being identified as Slim's son-in-law.

The collection is eclectic. One strength is Spanish and Spanish Colonial art. The latter is highlighted by a range of fine examples by José de Páez (1720-1790), a painter of refined Rococo religious piety, while the best of the former includes devotional paintings of saints by Francisco de  Zurbaran (stripped down and nearly modern) and El Greco (Expressionist to the hilt).

Among an exceptional group of painted standing screens, including masterpieces by Juan Correa (1646-1716) and Miguel Cabrera (1695-1768), is a remarkable multi-panel depiction of the biblical flood by an anonymous artist (or artists). Gilded, Chinese-style clouds above the deluge betray its origins in Macau for the colonial export trade to Mexico or Spain.

Not much distinguishes the rest of the European art. A painting said to be by a follower of  Leonardo da Vinci generally makes you wonder just how far behind he was following. A full-size bronze replica of Michelangelo's Vatican "Pietà" is a tourist souvenir.

The emergence of Mexican Modernism is not well traced in mostly minor landscapes by José María Velasco and Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo), which need to be strong to underscore the subsequent nationalist ferocity of Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Good examples of their murals are here, but they're adrift, exploding out of nowhere. Nineteenth-century portraiture fares better, culminating in four by the eccentric, self-taught national treasure Hermenegildo Bustos (1832-1891).

Throughout, the museum installation feels rushed. What possesses a curator to position a large, finely wrought Spanish Colonial sculpture of the Christ child in a vitrine pushed up next to a bright-red fire extinguisher and an emergency-exit door? Overhead track lights illuminate the limed-wood floors at the base of free-standing walls, all stark white, apparently in an attempt to bounce indirect light onto paintings; instead, hot spots illuminate baseboards, while paintings are shadowed at the top.

Overall, the installation sags. Works are dispersed thematically -- saints here, Jesus over there, landscapes and Bible narratives around the corner. It would benefit from, say, grouping Paez's paintings and the uniquely Asian-style Colonial screens, most of which stand on too-narrow risers. Strength would build on strength, rather than being diluted. The absence of discreet rooms makes displays look jumbled.

The Pre-Columbian art is largely perfunctory, especially given the city's unparalleled Museum of Anthropology a few miles away. Ditto the Colonial furniture and decorative arts, which can't measure up to the great Franz Mayer Museum downtown. A large array of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings and drawings (Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc.) is uniformly poor, seemingly driven by close attention to an accumulation of brand names.

The difference between private art enthusiasms and public museum displays can be vast. The Soumaya is an object lesson in the perils. For now, despite large resources, art is not the emphasis in this vanity museum. The question is whether it will someday become the focus.

Update: Additional photos (Credit: Christopher Knight/Los Angeles Times) show some installation issues at the Museum:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALSO:

Art review: 'David Smith: Cubes & Anarchy' at LACMA

Art review: 'Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster, 1964-1966' at LACMA

Art review: 'William Leavitt: Theater Objects' at MOCA

-- Christopher Knight, in Mexico City

@twitter.com/KnightLAT

Photo: Salvador Dali's "The Triumphant Angel" in the top-floor gallery of the Soumaya Museum. Credit: Reuters. Museum interiors photo credit: David Rochkind / Bloomberg, and AFP / Getty Images

Comments

[George M. Wallace]

Carlos Slim is now also the answer to the question, "Who is Mexico's answer to Armand Hammer?"

[henry]

And if a Mexican critic came to the U.S. and noted that Eli Broad's collection of 2000 pieces only had, say, 10% that were "really" important--the rest were "brand-names," as you put down the Soumaya? And if the same critic noted that Frank Gehry, L.A.'s famous architect, built something in the Middle East using slave-labor? And if the critic noted that one guy--like Carlos Slim--controls three L.A. institutions (E. Broad)? And finally, what if the same critic noted that the Getty holds work illegally, stolen by John P. Getty from those harmed by Nazism? Mr. Knight: you come across in this 'review' as a provincial snob.

[pornapum]

no, Mr. Wallace: Eli Broad is Carlos Slim. They change masks. One wishes a Mexican critic could do to MOCA what Mr. Knight has done to the Soumaya.

[boris8]

The comment about lighting in this review is not clear. ("The overhead fluorescent lighting is, well, fluorescent.") Mr. Knight has argued against natural light in reviews of other buildings, most recently the Broad project. Yet here's a museum that uses mostly artificial light, and it's wrong too. I need more information as to why, and what his values on this question are.

[boris8]

If we want to see a vanity museum in a vast package with a half-vast collection, all we need to do is go up to the Getty.

[Cate]

I like "sentimental Victorian odes to childhood innocence," but I wouldn't look for them in the "bustier building."

"What possesses a curator to position a large, finely wrought Spanish Colonial sculpture of the Christ child in a vitrine pushed up next to a bright-red fire extinguisher and an emergency-exit door?"

Maybe it was an overly protective curator's favorite and he/she was afraid it's going to be attacked by inflamed crazy people.

Hope you skipped the gift shop and spent what would have been your museum admission fee on a bottle of tequila, CK.

[Nick]

Well, when have you ever been impressed or aesthetically satisfied with ordinary overhead florescent lighting? That top picture just screams warehouse. In the last picture, you can definitely see the issue of paintings half in shadow.

[Christopher Knight]

Boris8: Actually, I have not "argued against natural light in reviews of other buildings..."

The column to which you refer considered a specific question: "Do the galleries of a contemporary art museum really benefit very much from natural light filtering in from skylights overhead?" The question was asked in relation to the planned Broad Collection building for Grand Ave.

The column made an important distinction between art made before the invention of electric light and contemporary art and, using famous examples in Munich and elsewhere, concluded that natural light is of consequence mostly to art made prior to the last 100 years or so.

That time-frame is largely the purview of the Soumaya, which is not a contemporary art museum.

[Mariana]

Mr. Knight's review will hopefully inspire the museum to take a more rigorous approach to collecting and displaying their collection. As a public museum it has enormous potential if led by a professional team of experts knowledgeable in art. With more of a focus on first-rate national (Mexican) as opposed to not-so-great "international" art it could have true global impact.