Franz Mayer Museum

The Franz Mayer Museum (Spanish: Museo Franz Mayer), in Mexico City opened in 1986 to house, display and maintain Latin America’s largest collection of decorative arts. The collection was amassed by stockbroker and financial professional Franz Mayer, who collected fine artworks, books, furniture, ceramics, textiles and many other types of decorative items over fifty years of his life. A large portion comes from Europe and Asia but most comes from Mexico itself with items dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Many pieces in the collection are fine handcrafts, such as textiles and Talavera pottery, and they are important because they are items that often did not survive because most did not consider them worth preserving.

In the 1920s, Mayer began collecting Talavera pottery from Puebla, one of the first collectors to do so. In Puebla, he was considered a bit crazy for buying all of the “old stuff” from the locals. The museum opened with the largest Puebla Talavera collection in the world with 726 pieces from the 17th to the 19th centuries and some 20th-century pieces by Enrique Luis Ventosa.

One important part of the museum complex is the Rogerio Casas-Alatriste H. Library, named after the first director. It is dedicated to Mayer’s book collection most of which were bought to research pieces which Mayer had bought or was interested in. The library is in the cloister area, containing with over 14,000 volumes, which includes 800 different editions of Don Quixote and the Chronicles of Nuremberg, edited in 1493. The interior of the library is a Classical design with shelving made of cedar to protect the books. The wood floor of the library was that of the Mayer’s original house as well as the terrarium and the candelabra .

In 2004, anthropologist Ruth D. Lechuga donated her private collection of artifacts and personal items to the museum. The collection contained over 14,000 artifacts, 5,000 books and magazines and 1,000 personal effects documenting Lechuga’s life from her family’s flight from the Nazi Anschluss in her native Austria to the years dedicated to the research on Mexico’s indigenous populations.

Anthropologists Marta Turok and Margarita de Orellana are the co-executors of the collection, which has been shown in several exhibits. In 2016, the Ruth D. Lechuga Center for Popular Art Studies (Spanish: Centro de Estudios de Arte Popular Ruth D. Lechuga (CEAP-RDL)) opened in the basement of the Museum.

The museum is one of the few places where European and Mexican painting is displayed together. European works date back as far as the 14th century, with those from Spain dating from the 14th to the 20th centuries. These include works by José de Ribera “El Españoleto”, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Ignacio Zuloaga. Italian art is represented by works by Lorenzo Lotto, and Alessandro Allori. Northern European painters include Jacob Grimmer and Bartholomeus Bruyn.

Mexican works are mostly from the colonial period and include pieces by Juan Correa, Miguel Cabrera, Juan and Nicolás Rodríguez Juárez and others. Almost of these are religious in nature, with a few portraits from the 18th century. Post colonial works include a landscape by José María Velasco and an early painting by Diego Rivera .Display of antique phonographs restored by Salvador Velez on display at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City.

In the 1920s, Mayer began collecting Talavera pottery from Puebla, one of the first collectors to do so. In Puebla, he was considered a bit crazy for buying all of the “old stuff” from the locals. The museum opened with the largest Puebla Talavera collection in the world with 726 pieces from the 17th to the 19th centuries and some 20th-century pieces by Enrique Luis Ventosa.

One important part of the museum complex is the Rogerio Casas-Alatriste H. Library, named after the first director. It is dedicated to Mayer’s book collection most of which were bought to research pieces which Mayer had bought or was interested in. The library is in the cloister area, containing with over 14,000 volumes, which includes 800 different editions of Don Quixote and the Chronicles of Nuremberg, edited in 1493. The interior of the library is a Classical design with shelving made of cedar to protect the books. The wood floor of the library was that of the Mayer’s original house as well as the terrarium and the candelabra .

In 2004, anthropologist Ruth D. Lechuga donated her private collection of artifacts and personal items to the museum. The collection contained over 14,000 artifacts, 5,000 books and magazines and 1,000 personal effects documenting Lechuga’s life from her family’s flight from the Nazi Anschluss in her native Austria to the years dedicated to the research on Mexico’s indigenous populations. Anthropologists Marta Turok and Margarita de Orellana are the co-executors of the collection, which has been shown in several exhibits. In 2016, the Ruth D. Lechuga Center for Popular Art Studies (Spanish: Centro de Estudios de Arte Popular Ruth D. Lechuga (CEAP-RDL)) opened in the basement of the Museum.