“This year is crucial for Munal to reconnect with young people.”

▲ Giving visibility to overlooked sectors, honoring the history of the site, offering visual experiences, and breaking down rigidity, suggests the museum's director, here during the interview. Photo by Yazmín Ortega Cortés

Daniel López Aguilar

La Jornada Newspaper, Tuesday, July 29, 2025, p. 2

Mireida Velázquez Torres, director of the National Museum of Art (Munal), is spearheading a renovation that honors the museum's history, updates its spaces, and rethinks its curatorial approach to open the collection to new perspectives and interpretations.

This is a decisive year to reconnect with younger generations and tell the story of Mexican art from an interdisciplinary and critical perspective , he said in an interview with La Jornada.

The key is to put the collections in dialogue with the present, so that visitors go beyond the emblematic pieces and discover new interpretations, multiple voices and meanings that have until now remained hidden.

Her return to Munal, the institution where she began her career in 2001, brings with it a resounding conviction: We cannot sustain uniform discourses; national artistic creation is a complex and plural framework that demands constant questioning in order to continue growing .

This critical and innovative approach is supported by a solid education. With a doctorate and master's degree in art history from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Velázquez brings to this stage a career supported by years of experience in management and curatorship at various museums, such as the National Museum of San Carlos and the Museum of Modern Art.

With nearly 9,000 works, the Munal faces the challenge of exhibiting only a small fraction due to space limitations. For this reason, the strategy focuses on highlighting the relationships between the pieces, their social, historical, and cultural contexts, as well as the diversity of those who shaped these stories.

We seek to make visible those who have been ignored: women, indigenous peoples, and all identities erased by official history , Velázquez emphasized.

One of the central focuses of this phase is the renovation of the 19th and 20th century tour, along with a museum redesign designed to offer a comprehensive and accessible experience.

The museum's proposal seeks to go beyond the simple exhibition, generating interdisciplinary connections with music, film, and dance, allowing for the construction of inclusive, contemporary, and relatable narratives for its visitors.

The Munal should be a dynamic forum, inviting visitors to stay, explore new ideas, question, and enjoy. A place that breaks with the usual rigidity to foster interaction, community, and joy. "Museums can be both enjoyable and safe, without losing depth or capacity for reflection ," the director added.

The second half of the year will bring offerings that reflect this innovative vision. Highlights include an exhibition dedicated to the Mexican painter José María Velasco, held in collaboration with the Kaluz Museum, which delves into the technique and identity behind his nineteenth-century landscapes.

We want to offer a visual experience that reveals other dimensions of this artist, an essential part of the national imagination , commented Mireida Velázquez. Another notable exhibition addresses the presence of Indigenous women from the viceroyalty to the present day.

Curated by Ariadna Solís and Andrea García, a researcher at the UNAM Institute of Aesthetic Research, this proposal represents an act of historical justice that challenges dominant narratives and gives voice to those who were previously represented from external, male perspectives.

Remains in the public interest

With 437,000 attendees in 2024 and more than 210,000 between January and the current year (according to official figures), the Munal maintains a steady stream of interest. Still, Velázquez Torres believes the real challenge goes beyond attracting an audience: it lies in establishing a genuine connection.

Young people want more than just looking at art; they need to feel heard and safe, as well as an area where they can enjoy and actively participate. The museum must meet these demands and become a meeting place for dialogue and shared enjoyment .

For the director, this perspective drives initiatives that encourage direct participation, with curatorial, museography, and research workshops that train new generations of professionals and thoughtful citizens.

The goal goes beyond displaying pieces; we seek to tell stories that provoke questions and foster exchange. The Munal must open itself to its surroundings and address current social concerns. It is a place of encounter and transformation, far removed from isolation .

The Reception Hall will retain its function as a key venue for concerts and cultural events, breaking with the idea of the museum as a site exclusively for visual contemplation .

For 2026, the director anticipates exhibitions that will delve into the complexity of Mexican art from different perspectives. Highlights include exhibitions on Ángel Zárraga and diplomatic relations through art, with approaches that illuminate the historical and symbolic nuances of Mexico.

Leading the Munal, an organization with so many years of history and a rich history, is an honor and a privilege; I appreciate the trust they have placed in me to take over. The team gives its all and heart to always be at the top of its game for its visitors , said Velázquez Torres.

We will continue working hand in hand with various organizations, cultural agents, and researchers to strengthen our exhibitions, research, and public programs.

▲ Under the Sign of Saturn will conclude in February 2026. It features 200 pieces by artists such as Breton, Carrington, and Tamayo. Photo by Yazmín Ortega

Omar González Morales

La Jornada Newspaper, Tuesday, July 29, 2025, p. 3

The German philosopher Walter Benjamin reflected on his destiny when he said: "I came into the world under the sign of Saturn, the slowest-revolving star, the planet of deviations and delays ." This phrase so marked the writer Susan Sontag that she used it as the title of one of her essay books. Now, the National Museum of Art (Munal) also endorses it in the exhibition "Under the Sign of Saturn: Divination in Art."

Inspired by André Breton's donation of a birth chart to his friend, the poet Jean Schuster, the exhibition brings together pieces from various collections to reflect on the role of art in the search for the depths of the human spirit. It also proposes a new interpretation of these collections through spiritualism and esotericism.

Curated by David Caliz, the exhibition consists of 200 pieces, including Tarot cards, sculptures, prints, photographs, books, paintings, newspaper clippings, and even textiles. The artists include André Breton, Leonora Carrington, José Guadalupe Posadas, Remedios Varo, Agustín Casasola, Rufino Tamayo, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Saturnino Herrán, and Nahui Ollin, among others. Documents from the Ricardo Pérez Escamilla Collection are also on display.

Our intention is to create a rich exhibition that complements and allows the public to reflect on museums as spaces for imagining diverse worlds and futures. "Is art a vehicle for understanding what we cannot? Can we construct new narratives based on new perspectives on the museums' collections? " the historian asked during the tour.

The exhibition is divided into four modules: Necromancy: Invoking the Dead, Clairvoyance, Astrology: Consulting the Stars, and Cosmic Terror: The Uncertainty of the Future. All modules describe the importance of the divinatory arts in 19th and 20th-century societies. Among the venues that collaborated on the exhibition are the Tamayo Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Chapultepec Castle Museum, the San Carlos Museum, the Carrillo Gil Museum, the National Photo Library, and private collections.

The first segment examines the role of the Spiritist movement and the desire to communicate with the afterlife to better understand death. This practice was common in the early 1900s, influenced by Allan Kardec and his magazine , Enlightenment Spiritist .

The artistic pieces take up gloomy aspects, such as the ghostly apparitions captured in the paintings Auto de fe, painted in 1906 by Julio Ruelas, and the zincography Invocando espíritus, created in 1900 by José Guadalupe Posadas, but also satire, as happened with the caricatures published in El Hijo del Ahuizote directed at Francisco I. Madero, a frequent practitioner of these rituals.

The desire to know the future has existed since the most ancient societies of humanity, and is the focus of the Clairvoyance module, from ancient Greece, through Rome and the empires of Asia and Egypt, to the present day, through crystal balls to palmistry and the Tarot, used by Carl Gustav Jung to create his archetypes.

The slogan "Know Yourself" links the works of Lola Álvarez Bravo with the collection of photographs of gypsy palm readers, titled "Popular Psychiatrist. " These photographs engage with sculptures and paintings by Leonora Carrington, who used a surrealist vision to explore her artistic universe, as represented by her effigy "Palmist," a woman with eyes in her hands and the face of a raven, considered one of the universal mystical birds that embody the concepts of destiny and mystery. Also noteworthy is the Tarot Chilango by Mexican photographer José Raúl Pérez, who in 1995 depicted the 22 arcana with characters based on emblematic professions and settings in the capital.

The core, Astrology: Consulting the Stars, focuses on the quest for self-discovery. This is where the exhibition's heart lies: Breton's astrological chart for Schuster, but it's not the only one: there's also one by the poet Ramón López Velarde and one by Remedios Varo. Along the same lines is Antonio Ruiz El Corcito's 1940 piece , The Celestial Planisphere, one of his largest paintings, and Saturnino Herrán's Woman X. Also notable are Gerardo Murillo's landscapes , Dr. Atl.

Cosmic Terror: The uncertainty of the future highlights how small human existence can seem when compared to the events of the universe. Here lie voids and galaxies captured by Rufino Tamayo, including pieces such as The Enlightened One, The Great Galaxy, Day and Night in the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, and Cosmic Terror, which dialogue with pieces by Mathias Goeritz, Cordelia Urueta, and David Alfaro Siqueros, while reflecting on the Latin phrase Quod est superius est sicut quod inferius (As above, so below).

The exhibition Under the Sign of Saturn: Divination in Art will conclude on February 15, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Munal (Tacuba 8, Historic Center).