Photographs by Javier Hinojosa, courtesy of Museo SoumayaThe Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, designed by Fernando Romero.When the pop star Shakira toured Mexico City’s new Museo Soumaya, her guide was none other than the museum’s founder, Carlos Slim Helú. A labor of love from Slim, the world’s richest man (who is also a creditor and minority shareholder of The New York Times Company), the museum, named after Slim’s late wife, has certainly got the city — and the art world — talking. Since it opened a couple of weeks ago with a gala attended by President Calderón and Gabriel García Márquez, more than 30,000 curious locals and tourists per day have streamed through its doors. (The museum is free to the public.)
The museum is home to numerous Rodin sculptures, including this one, right, in the cafe.The loudest part of the buzz about Soumaya is the love it-or-hate it design by Slim’s architect son-in-law, Fernando Romero. The building resembles a trapezoid in motion, which Romero, who has worked at Rem Koolhaas’s firm, covered in 16,000 hexagonal aluminum plates that reflect sunlight, most beautifully at sunset. The structure also cribs features from some of the world’s top museums, including a grand Met-like exterior staircase that has already become a place to meet and snap photos, and stark, all-white interiors that recall New York’s Guggenheim — you take the elevator to the top floor and descend via ramps.
Though Slim’s collection is reportedly 70,000 pieces strong and worth $750 million, the six floors and 183,000 square feet of exhibition space will showcase only a fraction of it at any one time. The top-floor sculpture garden, dominated by a spectacular skylight, displays numerous Rodins (Slim is said to have the largest collection outside France), and elsewhere are paintings and murals by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, as well as works from Miró, Van Gogh, Botero, Matisse and El Greco. The museum also has a 350-seat auditorium, a public library, a gift shop and a cafe.
