Postcard from Mexico City: Modernist architecture to famed murals and the hottest art galleries.

ArtsHub takes a trip to Mexico City – and its 170 registered museums – discovering that there is much more than Hollywood cartel tropes that define this enigmatic city.
colourful mural with picture of Frida Kahlo, Mexico City

Did you know that Mexico City has more than 170 registered museums, rivalling New York, London and Paris as the city with the most museum offerings? It is no surprise, then, that Ciudad de México, or CDMX as its known, is being flagged as one of the hot cultural tourism spots of 2025.

Mexico City: if you are a Frida fan

Leading a bucket-list itinerary for many is a visit to Museo Casa Azul (Blue House), the home of Frida Kahlo in the bohemian neighbourhood of Coyoacán – today buzzing with cafes and design shops (and more recently the subject of media headlines for its gentrification).

Picture of a light filled artist studio. Mexico City
Studio of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at Museo Casa Azul, Mexico City. Photo: Gina Fairley.

Despite the rooms of Casa Azul being small, and few paintings by Kahlo on show to speak of, it is nevertheless one of those destinations that has a calling. Its popularity has led to the establishment of the new museum – Museo Casa Kahlo or Casa Roja (Red House) – across the road, and former home of Kahlo’s sister Cristina.

It opens in September, and unlike Casa Azul, which is administered by the State, Museo Casa Kahlo will be managed by the New York based Fundación Kahlo. It promises to the better option.

Part of the appeal of Casa Azul is its voyeuristic window to a life of art, romance and fame , but the city is layered with many similar connections. Did you know American writer William S. Burroughs, lived in the borough of Colonia Roma where he accidentally shot his wife, and here Jack Kerouac also penned his masterpiece volume of poetry Mexico City Blues in 1959.

Photographers Tina Modotti and Edward Weston called the city home for many years, as did Leonora Carrington, and more recently Belgian artist, Francis Alÿs – unsurprising given the city’s walkability.

Layers of this bohemian, and at times radical, heart of the city continue to bubble up in unexpected ways today, and weaves its way across the contemporary art scene, which is catching the eye of curators and collectors globally as a fresh frontier.

Mexico City: commercial galleries to visit

Exterior view of a contemporary art gallery with open roof and trusses. Mexico City
kurimanzutto gallery in Mexico City. Photo: Gina Fairley.

Within close proximity, in the San Miguel Chapultepec area, are two of Mexico City’s most established and celebrated galleries: kurimanzutto (founded in 1999 by José Kuri and Mónica Manzutto, with the support of the prominent Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco). It is a stunning space.

The other is LABOR Gallery (opposite Casa Barragán) with its signature aqua façade, it was founded in 2009 by curator Pamela Echeverría, and works with artists whose projects are grounded in research processes, and have a particular bent on socio-political work that critics the contemporary art world. If you don’t have time for any others, make sure these are on your list.

‘Mexico City’s art world has always been born out of a collaborative and experimental energy drawn from the country’s rich cultural history,’ Taylor Fisch, curator of archives at kurimanzutto, tells Artsy. ‘It thrives when people from diverse backgrounds and disciplines come together to consider that history while redefining what it means to create art in Mexico today.’

Another for your list, is OMR Gallery in the Roma district, equally as established (1983) and today also showing some of the most experimental work in Mexico City, such as gallery artist Candida Höfer.  Galería Hilario Galguera, also in Roma, opened in 2006 with Damien Hirst’s first exhibition in Latin America and has continued to show renowned local and international artists.

They are joined by newcomer, the major Madrid gallery Travesia Cuatro which set up its Mexico City branch in 2019.

Proyectos Monclova in the Polenco area is also work including on your list. It is not far from the impressive Museo Jumex, which houses one of Latin America’s most significant private contemporary art collections. Designed by David Chipperfield, the striking minimalist building features a distinctive saw-tooth roof. Highlights of the collection include works by Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and Gabriel Orozco.

And to round out your contemporary art viewing, include a visit to Fundación Casa Wabi, a this non-profit arts centre has locations in Oaxaca and Mexico City, and was founded by the artist Bosco Sodi. The location in Mexico is also home to Sodi’s studio, designed by famed Mexican architect Alberto Kalach. Visitors can – with a reservation – get a look inside the space where the artist’s large-scale, textural paintings and sculptures come to life.

Zona Maco, the city’s annual art fair is becoming one of the hottest fairs around and welcomed record attendance for its 2024 edition, totalling 81,000 visitors and 200 exhibitors. It is in sync with the swell around the city, which both Forbes and Time Out, ranked among the world’s best and most liveable cities for expats in 2024.   

Masterpieces of Modernist architecture across Mexico City

Luis Barragán is Mexico’s most celebrated architect, and you can experience his designs from his home and studio Casa Luis Barragán, to restaurants, to the masterpiece Casa Gilardi – his last work made. Here an 80-year-old Barragán uses colour and light as sculptural elements, defining form and creating a full physical immersive for the visitor.

It is an easy walk from Barragán’s home, (the only private residence in Latin America to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and was commissioned in the mid-1970s by his friend, advertising executive Francisco Gilardi, whose sons guide visitors through the house today.

It is one of those experience that leaves you feeling you have been gifted a great privilege. I am so excited to include it on my itinerary next April (2026), when leading a tour of art enthusiasts for the Art Gallery of NSW.

Barragán’s iconic estate, La Cuadra San Cristóbal, on the fringes of the city (a bit of a trek with the traffic), will open in September this year as a multidiscipline cultural campus, thanks to American Architect and philanthropist Fernando Romero.

It will feature a permanent exhibition on Barragán’s career, curated by Jorge Covarrubias, an architect who carried out a faithful restoration Barragán’s Casa Prieto López and Fuente del Bebedero, both in Mexico City.

Mexico City: free museums to see Diego Rivera murals

stairwell in classical building covered in murals of farm workers. Mexico City
Staircase of murals at Museo Vivo Muralismo, Mexico City. Photo: Gina Fairley

When the Mexican Mural Movement started in the early 1920s, it was with a nationalistic zeal and vision to bring art to the people. That ethos continues today with the majority of venues housing Diego Rivera’s murals remaining free to enter.  

Within walking distance are four key museums: Museo Vivo del Muralismo, which only opened last September and is the former Ministry of Education; Colegio de San Ildefonos, considered the birthplace of Mexican Muralism; the stunning art nouveau Palacio de Bellas Artes (equivalent to the Sydney Opera House) which displays a version of Rivera’s famed mural Man at the Crossroads (1933) commissioned for the Rockefeller Centre in New York City, only to be destroyed.

The four is the Diego Rivera Museo Mural, which houses but one mural – Diego’s largest completed – A Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park. What is nice, is that you can walk across the park (the oldest public park in the Americas) from Palacio de Bellas Artes to see it.

The 15.6m fresco was completed in 1947 for the Hotel del Prado, which was severely damaged in the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. It was cut free, and moved to a custom-built museum – its 150 portraits of Mexican’s most prominent characters preserved.

view inside a gallery with a very long painting of a sunday park scene. Diego Rivera Mexico City
Installation view Diego Rivera Museo Mural. Photo: Gina Fairley

Of these, the bucket-list visit however would have to be the Museo Vivo del Muralismo, which only opened last September and is the former Ministry of Education. You can freely wander at your leisure taking in over 200 frescoes (more than 3,000 sq. m of murals) by Diego Rivera, and his colleagues, over three floor – on ceilings, in doorways, skinning walls, and descending stairwells.

Mexico City: a brush with the past

A visit to the city is not complete with a visit to the Museo Nacionale de Antropología, one of the best examples of its kind in the world – it is enormous – and it is worth every penny to get a guide to help usher you through this encyclopedic collection of pre-Colombian artifacts. It is located in Chapultepec Park, and a leafy walk to Museo Tamayo – with fantastic rotating contemporary exhibitions, and the Museo de Arte Moderno, where you will find Kahlo’s famous painting Two Fridas.

exterior of building in Aztec style built from volcanic stone. Mexico City
Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli. Photo: Gina Fairley.

At a more manageable scale, is the Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli, designed by the artist to house his enormous collection of objects – which he started amassing from the age of 10. Sadly, Rivera did not get to see it finished – a job that was completed by his daughter Ruth.

Muster up your inner Indiana Jones, because inside is a totally immersive experience moving through tiny angled doorways to arrive at a trove of treasures. Moving across its three levels, one literally rises from the underworld, to the earthly world of the middle level, and eventually a light-filled heavens on the top floor.

And, in-keeping with Rivera’s wishes, each year a contemporary artists is invite to respond to the collection in-situ. By far one of my favourite stops, for its intimacy and sense of soul, fusing pre-hispanic traditional with the modernist zeal that shaped a new nation of Mexico during the 1920-1940s.

Mexico City is one of those ‘iceberg’ destinations – you only ever scratch the tip of it – so going back is a love affair that starts and never ends. I will be returning in April next year, leading an International Study Tour, which will visit these touchpoints and more.

But if going solo is your then, then a good tip to remember: the best way to get around is to use Uber. I booked ahead my trips for the day making it super hassle free. Drivers tended to arrive on, or before the scheduled time, and the joy is you didn’t have to bother about haggling prices or conveying directions in broken Spanish.

The key to anything in this pulsing super city of 22 million – is to cluster your activities in zones or boroughs. Most of the main museums are either in the Centro Historica or Chapultepec Park area.

Mexico City freeway with lots of plants
Green freeways in Mexico City, 2025. Photo: Gina Fairley.

And, if you do get caught in a traffic jam – rest assured the freeway structures are covered in vertical gardens and your Uber driver is usually playing the latest Mexican vibes. So, sit back and take it all in. Oh, and did I mention the food….

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Postcard from Hong Kong (2023)
Postcard from Edinburgh (2023)
Postcard from London (2023)
Postcard from New York (2023)


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Gina Fairley is ArtsHub's National Visual Arts Editor. For a decade she worked as a freelance writer and curator across Southeast Asia and was previously the Regional Contributing Editor for Hong Kong based magazines Asian Art News and World Sculpture News. Prior to writing she worked as an arts manager in America and Australia for 14 years, including the regional gallery, biennale and commercial sectors. She is based in Mittagong, regional NSW. Twitter: @ginafairley Instagram: fairleygina