WORK BEGINS ON THE EXPANSION AND RENOVATION OF THE MUSEO TAMAYO
http://www.museotamayo.org

• Consuelo Sáizar, Teresa Vicencio and David Cohen supervise the laying of the first stone

• The architect Teodoro González de León was commissioned to plan the project

• The expansion of the museum’s space will be achieved without any ecological damage to Chapultepec Park

The Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (CONACULTA), the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA) and the Fundación Olga y Rufino Tamayo (FORT) are pleased to announce that work has begun on the expansion and renovation of the Museo Tamayo, located in the Chapultepec Park. The project’s many benefits will include expanded and improved exhibition spaces, storage areas, a library, a restaurant, and areas for workshops and educational activities.

To commemorate the moment, a ceremony for the laying of the first stone was held this morning, presided over by Consuelo Sáizar, president of CONACULTA, Marcelo Ebrard, mayor of Mexico City, Teresa Vicencio, director of the INBA, Teodoro González de León, the project architect, David Cohen Sitton, president of the FORT, and Carmen Cuenca, director of the Museo Tamayo.Teodoro González de León was commissioned as the project architect through an agreement reached with the FORT and the INBA in 2009. The stated objective was to enlarge and modernize the museum’s infrastructure. Over the months that followed, an engineering plan was developed for the project, for the adaptation of spaces and for how artworks should be moved.

Thirty years after it was first built, the Museo Tamayo’s expansion project was assigned to the same architect who had originally designed the building together with Abraham Zabludovsky, garnering them the National Prize for Architecture in 1982.

The expansion and renovation will have no effect on the building’s architectural form, because it was planned as an expandable modular structure since its conception in the 1970s. The project will maintain the building’s distinctive abstract aesthetic modeled on a pre-Hispanic pyramid; sloping vine-covered earth taluses on three sides define the perimeter and create a sense of continuity with the forest.

It bears noting that the expansion will be carried out within the museum’s current perimeter, meaning that the project will have no detrimental effects on the ecology of Chapultepec Forest.

The project proposes to capitalize on the museum’s existing spaces and update them, but new spaces will also be built to permit the optimal functioning of the institution: new exhibition spaces, an area for workshops and offices, a restaurant with an outdoor terrace, and an area for machines and installation.

Renovations will be carried out in the auditorium, art storage spaces, offices, gift shop, contemporary art library and center for documentation, as well as the museography and maintenance areas. This will be made possible through combined funding from the National Council for Culture and the Arts, the National Fine Arts Institute and the Olga and Rufino Tamayo Foundation, for a total of eighty-four million pesos.

The project is expected to be completed in the spring of 2012.

According to the agreement reached among the three institutions, the project will be overseen by the FORT, which invited three construction companies to submit proposals. The winning submission was that of Arquitech, both for its proposal and for the quality of its previous work.