Museo Universitario del Chopo, Contemporary art museum in Santa María la Ribera, Mexico City, Mexico.
The Museo Universitario del Chopo occupies a prefabricated Jugendstil iron, pressed-brick and glass building designed by Bruno Möhring for the 1902 Düsseldorf art and textile exhibition. Two slender lattice steel towers with pale green domed caps flank a tall arched glass facade above a tan brick wall; the sign over the entrance reads "Museo Universitario del Chopo". The structure measures 1,500 square metres and its towers rise 47 metres.
Designed by Bruno Möhring for the 1902 art and textile exhibition in Düsseldorf, the iron and glass pavilion was bought by José Landero y Coss and reassembled on Poplar Street between 1903 and 1905. After his company failed, it housed the Japanese Pavilion of the 1910 centenary exhibition, then the National Museum of Natural History from 1913. Closed in 1964 and abandoned, it reopened as the Chopo Museum on 25 November 1975.
The street outside was formerly Calle del Chopo, named for the poplars that gave the museum its nickname El Chopo. Inside, the museum runs contemporary music, dance, theatre, film screenings and lectures alongside its exhibitions, and from 2013 its director was José Luis Paredes Pacho.
The museum stands at Doctor Enrique González Martínez Street #10 in Colonia Santa María la Ribera, on the former Poplar Street, whose neighbours carry tree and flower names. The iron and glass halls cover 1,500 square metres, and the flanking lattice towers rise 47 metres. UNAM renovated and expanded the building between 2004 and 2010.
The building was designed by Bruno Möhring for the 1902 art and textile exhibition in Düsseldorf and manufactured in Oberhausen by Gutehoffnungshütte; the name of the mining firm still appears on some of its beams. In 1970 a demolition company offered 40,000 pesos to clear the site, but its status as a historic monument stopped the sale.
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