National Museum of Watercolor named after Alfredo Guati Rojo

Brief information

The first building of this museum disappeared after the 1985 earthquake, so the current museum in Coyoacan reads as a second beginning for the collection. It did not arise in a purpose-built museum structure, but on the grounds of a former private house: the permanent exhibition is housed in the central building, surrounded by a garden.

The museum is devoted to watercolor, but presents it more broadly than the familiar sheet of paper. The permanent collection traces a line from the pre-Hispanic period to the present, and an important turn is hidden at the very beginning: water-based paints and natural pigments connect watercolor with painted clay vessels and early codices. After that, watercolor here appears not only as an artists' technique, but also as a way of recording the world.

What to notice right away

It makes sense to look at the museum as a house that gradually became an exhibition complex. The central main house stands in the middle of the grounds, with a garden laid out around it, and nearby are a temporary exhibition hall, a cafe, and lecture rooms. This arrangement explains why the place is not reducible to a sequence of galleries: the garden and the house work together.

In the garden, what matters is not general talk about greenery, but a set of specific elements: flowering shrubs, grapevines, fountains, and contemporary sculptures with a Mexican character. They were created over the years by Guati Rojo himself and his wife, so the garden is tied to the museum's origins no less strongly than the collection. Inside the main house, the seven exhibition rooms can be compared with one study without works of art: the chronological hanging leads from the pre-Hispanic period to the present, while the empty study leaves in the house a trace of its former, non-museum function.