The Mexican Museum

PROFILE OF THE MEXICAN MUSEUM

The Mexican Museum in San Francisco is the first and the oldest-operating museum outside of Mexico and the world to exhibit Mexican and Mexican-American art and culture. The collection at The Mexican Museum represents a treasury for the passionate voice of a vibrant people: it has collected over 14,000 objects spanning thousands of years of art and culture in the Americas.

The Mexican Museum was founded in the heart of San Francisco's Mission District in 1975 by Bay Area artist and visionary Peter Rodriguez with the intent to exhibit Mexican and Mexican-American art. It relocated to the city's Fort Mason in 1982. Beginning in 1991, the Mexican Museum initiated efforts to establish a permanent home which lead to an agreement with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency to dedicate land in Jessie Square across from Yerba Buena Center and create a construction and operating fund. The current vision is to develop the museum's permanent home as part of a multi-use complex. The museum has presented over 150 exhibits since it opened in 1975.

Mission: Museum philosophy The Mexican Museum is a first voice institution that utilizes Latino cultural expression as a lens for examining parallel experiences shared by the many cultural communities that constitute the Americas. This requires us to be continually mindful that our approach to artistic and scholarly work communicates multi-faceted Mexican and Latino artistic and cultural ideas. It is through this lens that meaningful links are made to other cultures setting a framework for navigating within, and contributing to, our contemporary society. Our philosophy grows from the understanding that a community is comprised of many influences, histories and experiences. It is on this foundation that The Mexican Museum stands to make its most significant contributions to the field. Through the lens of Mexican, Latino and Chicano arts and culture, the Museum provides: Reciprocity, a living cultural intersection where innovative ideas and public experiences develop and influence one another Multiple points of view in curation, education and scholarship Programs which reflect a range of cultural influences, comprising the Mexican, Latino and Chicano experience A re-definition of ideas and practices within and outside the arts and cultural field Meaningful links to life experience As the world strives for greater understanding and appreciation between cultures, art continues to be one of history's most enduring and visual languages, providing an important vehicle for re-interpreting the past, expounding on the present, and alluding to the future.