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Anahuacalli
Designed by Diego Rivera to house his collection of pre-Hispanic art, this museum, 3.5km south of Coyoacán, is a fortresslike building made of dark volcanic stone. It incorporates stylistic features from many pre-Hispanic cultures. An inscription over the door reads: 'To return to the people the artistic inheritance I was able to redeem from their ancestors.' If the air is clear, the view over the city from the roof is great.
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Arróniz
Despite its location on an elegant leafy square, this gallery has a raw urban energy, with its Soho-style space and basic concrete floors. This is the only gallery in the country specializing in limited-edition engravings and prints. Artists include new and emerging, as well as the established. There are generally a modest number of paintings and photography on show here, too. Exhibitions change every three months.
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Biblioteca Central
As you enter the northern part of the campus from Insurgentes, it's easy to spot the Central Library - 10 floors high, almost windowless and covered on every side with colorful, complicatedly symbolic mosaics by Juan O'Gorman. The south wall, with two prominent zodiac wheels, covers colonial times, while the north wall deals with Aztec culture.
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Biblioteca De México
The formidable compound now known as 'The Citadel' started off as a tobacco factory in the late 18th century. Later it was converted to an armory and a political prison, but it is best known as the scene of the Decena Trágica (Tragic Ten Days), the coup that brought down the Madero government in 1913. Today it is home to the National Library, with holdings of over 260,000 volumes and a good periodicals collection. The central halls are given over to art exhibits.
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Casa Del Poeta Ramón López Velarde
Composer of the lyrical paean to the nation La Suave Pátria, the beloved poet Ramón López Velarde resided in this building until his death in 1921. From his humble studio, you go through an armoire to embark on a journey through López Velarde's imagination. Fragments of the poet's verses are scattered around surreal sculptures, toys and dioramas.
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Casa Verde
Art is, by definition, a creative expression and so should not necessarily be restricted to urban galleries and museums. And, in the case of the Casa Verde, the reverse is the case. Located on the outskirts of the city, this bold new gallery, founded in 2005, has integrated contemporary sculpture with the natural environment in an open-air gallery that covers a hectare of lushly unspoiled natural parkland and gardens. Dramatic contemporary sculptures punctuate their surroundings like so many exclamation marks; exhibited on a series of grassy terraces and, thus, open to the elements, rather than just the air-con-cum-cigarette smoke gallery norm.
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Centro Cultura De Casa Lamm
This beautiful Art Deco building creates a perfect ambience for this private art college, which offers lectures and courses, as well as a video club, café, bookshop, library and excellent art gallery exhibiting the work of talented contemporary artists such as Cuban Eduardo Roca Salazar (Choco).
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Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco
Inaugurated in 2007, the Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco occupies the former Foreign Relations Secretariat building (the agency has since moved to the Plaza Juárez complex on the Alameda Central). A component of the UNAM, the cultural center contains two interesting permanent exhibits. The Colección Andrés Blaisten, on the first floor, comprises the largest privately owned collection of Mexican 20th-century art.
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Centro De La Imagen
At the Balderas entrance to La Ciudadela is the city's photography museum. The innovatively curated space stages compelling exhibitions, often focusing on documentary views of Mexican life by some of the country's sharpest observers. Pick up a copy of Luna Córnea, the photography journal published by the center, at the excellent bookstore.
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Centro Nacional De Las Artes
The National Arts Center, just east of Calzada de Tlalpan, is a modern hothouse of the arts. It's home to the Auditorio Blas Galindo, the Teatro de las Artes and two other theaters, the national music conservatory and the schools of theater, dance, cinema, painting, sculpture and engraving. Even if you're not here for a performance, it's still interesting to stroll through the grounds amid the modern architecture and browse the center's excellent bookshop and art materials shop.
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Cinco Clásicos
This small gallery in an exquisitely restored 1930s dollhouse of a building deals with mainly contemporary Latin American and Mexican art. The painters include Francisco Toledo, Sergio Hernandez and Rafael Coronel. The congenial owner, Simón Alkón, speaks excellent English.
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Círculo Azul
The picturesque courtyard, with its tiles and 16th-century fountain, is a fitting introduction to this fine gallery, with its classic and contemporary artwork and sculpture. There's an original painting signed by Diego Rivera, plus some stunning charcoal and ink drawings by contemporary Mexican artist, Raquel Chávez Lanz.
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Galería De Arte Mexicano
The first contemporary art gallery to open in Mexico City (way back in 1935). Since this time, the gallery has held close to 1000 shows, with exhibitions of smock-and-beret masters like Diego Rivera, Miguel Covarrubias, Rufino Tamayo and Frida Kahlo. The gallery continues to promote established and emerging Mexican artists and remains one of the most exciting and extensive in the city.
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Galería De Nuestra Cocina Duque De Herdez
This modest museum, sponsored by Mexican canned-food giant Herdez, follows the history of the country's renowned cuisine. You'll find out what Mexicans were eating before the Spanish conquest and how the two traditions fused to yield all those wonderful tacos, tamales and salsas. Probably the most useful feature is the gastronomic library downstairs.
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Galería Juan Martín
A welcoming two-story gallery with a light, airy feel and an exciting permanent collection of paintings, pottery and photography by Mexican and international artists, as well as regular temporary exhibitions. The variety and combination of styles and themes contributes towards the appeal of the place.
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Galería Nina Menocal
Established in 1990, this sophisticated Cuban-owned gallery became initially famous for representing legendary Cuban artists like Félix González and still represents several Cuban artists, as well as Mexican and European contemporary artists and sculptors. The gallery's setting is a classic colonial-style '40s building with galleries situated around a central ivy-flanked courtyard.
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Gallery 13
This is a young dynamic gallery that typically displays up-and-coming artists and photographers under the age of 30. The exhibition spaces are spread over two floors with five well-lit galleries. Definitely one to watch.
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Garash
A gregarious toddler on the contemporary art scene, Garash was established in 2003 in this classic early 20th-century building, complete with original columns. Exhibitors are mainly Mexican and Japanese and tend to be in the innovative genre of Hisae Ikenaga, the Madrid-based sculptor famed for transforming mass produced modular furniture into startlingly contemporary sculpted forms and who has had a successful solo exhibition here.
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Jardín Del Arte
A small art market, between Sullivan and Villalongín, and also known as the Sullivan Market, has a large selection of paintings and art supplies, plus some food.
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Laboratorio De Arte Alameda
As with many museums in the Centro Histórico, the building that contains the Alameda Art Laboratory is as interesting as its contents. The former church is just a fragment of the 17th-century Convento de San Diego which was dismantled under the postindependence reform laws. As the museum's name suggests, it hosts installations by leading experimental artists from Mexico and abroad, with an emphasis on current electronic, virtual and interactive media. They could not have asked for a grander exhibition space.
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Lourdes Sosa
A small one-room gallery with regular exhibitions of paintings, sculptures and graphic art by renowned national artists such as Manuel Felguérez, whose massive Puerta 1808 sculpture graces the intersection between Paseo de la Reforma and Juaréz near the city center.
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Muca
This gallery is a branch of the national university's Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Artes. The range of exhibits is impressive, covering both traditional and cutting-edge contemporary Mexican art, like the pop art style installations of Manolo Arriola for which he projects images on to the wall via a dazzle of neon lights.
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Museo Archivo De La Fotografía
Inaugurated in November 2007, the photographic archive museum occupies the 16th-century Casa de Ajaracas, which was completely renovated for the purpose. The museum draws from a century's worth of images taken for the Gaceta Oficial del Distrito Federal - the DF public record - to document the capital's development and preserve the memory of its streets, plazas, buildings and people.
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Museo Casa Del Risco
A mad mosaic of Talavera tile and Chinese porcelain. Upstairs is a treasure trove of Mexican baroque and medieval European paintings.
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Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera Y Frida Kahlo
If you saw the movie Frida, you'll recognize the Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Studio Museum, 1km northwest of Plaza San Jacinto. Designed by their friend, the architect and painter Juan O'Gorman, the innovative abode was the home of the artistic couple from 1934 to 1940, with a separate house for each of them. Frida lived there for five years until she decided to divorce Diego for supposedly having an affair with her sister, and took her things over to the Casa Azul in Coyoacán. (They remarried soon afterward.)
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