Museo Amparo

In April 1979, Mexican banker and businessman Manuel Espinosa Yglesias established Fundación Amparo with the intention of carrying out educational and cultural events as well as activities for social benefit in Mexico. In the cultural field, Museo Amparo is the Foundation’s most important endeavor. Funded to commemorate the memory of his wife, Amparo Rugarcía Espinosa, Espinosa Yglesias along with his daughter Ángeles conceived a museographical institution in the traditional sense, dedicated to exhibiting, promoting and studying Mexican Art. The originating mission of the Museum was to catalyze dialogue between art, history, the present, the roots and the people of Mexico. For seventeen years, Museo Amparo was directed by Ángeles Espinosa Yglesias, who positioned the Museum as a main cultural referent in Mexico and abroad.

Museo Amparo gathers together over 3,500 pieces of Precolumbian, Viceregal and 19th Century, and Contemporary Art, being one of the most important Precolumbian Art collections exhibited in a private museum in Mexico. In addition to its extraordinarily rich holding of Mexican Art, the Museum supports a temporary exhibition program as well as academic and artistic events addressed to the general and to the specialized public. Every year Museo Amparo has approximately ninety thousand visitors and about twelve thousand participants in the many workshops, courses, conferences, seminars and other events it offers.

The Museo Amparo is located in Puebla’s Historic Center, lodged in an extraordinary viceregal building, originally the San Juan de Letrán Hospital. Erected in 1538, it was the City’s very first health institution. Throughout the years, the ensemble of buildings that constituted the hospital were transformed into different institutions as well as into private homes. For the creation of Museo Amparo, the buildings were restored and incorporated according to an architectonic rescue project directed by architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez. More recently, Museo Amparo celebrated its twentieth anniversary with an architectonic, museographic and pedagogic actualization, which was proposed by TEN Arquitectos, the firm led by Enrique Norten. The Museum’s actualization has the purpose of fulfilling contemporary society’s cultural demands and to offer a new experience to its visitors.

With the actualization of the Museo Amparo, Ángeles Espinosa Yglesias’ children continue her arduous work in the cultural field reflecting her commitment to art and to philanthropy. The care and attention that had been paid to the Museo Amparo’s collection under Ángeles Espinosa Yglesias’ visionary management, have now been extended to art made in the present. This means that the Museum has instituted a new acquisition policy focusing on collecting, showing and producing contemporary art exhibitions of recognized national and international artists as well as young promising art makers.

The richness of the experience of visiting the Museum’s collection is complemented with the opportunity to see, enjoy and learn from temporary exhibitions at the global level. In addition, the Museo Amparo offers recreational, creative, educative and research activities.

Because it is lodged in a building that has been qualified as historical heritage, for the great quality and relevance of its temporary exhibitions, for the wide variety of activities it offers and for the beauty of its museographical spaces, the Museo Amparo is considered to be one of the most important cultural and exhibition centers in Mexico.