Museo Soumaya, Art museum in Polanco district, Mexico
The Museo Soumaya at Plaza Carso is a 46-metre-high, six-storey building designed by Fernando Romero with engineering advice from Ove Arup and Frank Gehry. Its asymmetric facade is a continuous shell of more than 16,000 silver aluminium hexagonal modules that touch neither the ground nor each other, so they appear to float; the only visible opening is the entrance door. Inside, 28 curved steel columns and seven perimeter beams carry the weight, and a spiral ramp links the floors.
The collection opened on 8 December 1994 at Plaza Loreto, a former paper mill in San Ángel where the second printing of the 1824 Federal Constitution was made on its paper. Grupo Carso converted the ruins after a 1980s fire and received ICOMOS recognition in 1996. The Plaza Carso building by Fernando Romero opened on 29 March 2011 as a second venue; Plaza Loreto still operates.
The collection brings together 66,000 artworks ranging from pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures to European masters, including paintings by Tintoretto, Van Gogh and Mexican artists like Diego Rivera, representing different epochs of art history.
Located in western Mexico City, the museum offers free admission to all visitors and contains the most extensive private collection of Auguste Rodin sculptures outside France, featuring numerous bronze casts of his major works.
The museum carries the name of Soumaya Domit, the late wife of founder Carlos Slim. Its collection spans three millennia, with works distributed between both museum locations in the Mexican capital.
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