The project that Diego Rivera envisioned as a future “city of the arts” in southern Mexico City has received its biggest boost in decades from the artist’s grandson. Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera donated 157,300 pieces from his own private collection to the Museo Anahuacalli in a move that expands the institution’s holdings and revives the cultural vision conceived by his famous grandfather.
Spanning ceramics, textiles, wooden objects, prints, photographs, archives and a research library, the donation includes works dating from the 16th century to the present. It will be moved in stages over the coming months, beginning with the ceramics and followed by manuscripts and correspondence related to Diego Rivera. The process is expected to be complete before the end of the year.
Coronel Rivera—a photographer, art historian, writer and collector—spent more than four decades building his collection, shaped by his engagement with Mexican art. Notably eclectic, it brings together pre-Hispanic objects, personal papers connected to Diego Rivera, family documents and works from Coronel Rivera’s own career, though it does not include paintings by Diego Rivera or Frida Kahlo.
The donation brings renewed attention to the institutional structure designed by Diego Rivera in 1955, when he created an irrevocable trust with the Banco de México as trustee to ensure that his two museums remain public. The trust jointly administers the Museo Anahuacalli and the Museo Frida Kahlo, known as Casa Azul.
“The collection was always intended to be housed in a museum,” Coronel Rivera said during a press conference at Museo Anahuacalli last month. “But I never thought it would end up here.” He added that he had never been closely involved with the trust and described the agreement as something that was meant to be.
One of the works donated to the museum Courtesy Museo Anahuacalli
Diego Rivera created Museo Anahuacalli to house his collection of pre-Hispanic art, leaving it to the people of Mexico. The building’s volcanic-stone architecture made it one of the most distinctive cultural spaces in southern Mexico City.
In the 1940s and 50s, Diego Rivera envisioned a larger “city of the arts” on the same site—a campus dedicated to art-making, teaching and the meeting of different artistic traditions. In his own words, it was meant to bring together “the artist trained in schools and academies with the potter, the weaver, the basketmaker, the stonemason, with everything that is the pure and highest expression of the Mexican people”.
For Teresa Moya, Museo Anahuacalli’s director, the addition of Coronel Rivera’s collection revives a mission that was part of the museum’s origin. “Diego Rivera conceived this museum not only as an exhibition space but as a place where collecting would be a form of knowledge,” she tells The Art Newspaper. Moya adds that the donation strengthens the museum’s role as a centre for research, conservation and consultation, further establishing it as an institution linking the pre-Hispanic past to modern and contemporary art, and now to an expansive archive.
Perla Labarthe Álvarez, the director of the Museo Frida Kahlo, notes that the donation creates possibilities for new readings across collections. “Frida and Diego viewed collecting as a way of honouring the cultures that came before them and the way they understood the world,” she says. “Both Casa Azul and the Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli are spaces rooted in that conviction.”
Coronel Rivera’s donation coincides with expansion plans for Museo Anahuacalli. During the press conference, the architect Mauricio Rocha—who led the museum’s previous extension between 2016 and 2021—said that new buildings to house the collection remain at a conceptual stage. Construction is expected to begin in late 2026 or 2027. No budget details have been announced.
