Frida Kahlo\u2019s family has announced the 27 September opening of a new museum near the famed Casa Azul in Coyoac\u00e1n, Mexico City. The move strengthens the neighbourhood\u2019s status as the leading Kahlo pilgrimage site and reaffirms the artist\u2019s global reach. Museo Casa Kahlo, also known as Casa Roja, will offer an intimate view of the artist\u2019s formative years, displaying the objects, documents and photographs her family kept at the home. It is the first museum run by Kahlo\u2019s descendants.<\/p>\n
The property, often frequented by Kahlo in her lifetime, belonged to her parents and later to her younger sister, Cristina. It has remained in the family for decades, along with a private archive. That archive was first examined in Luis-Mart\u00edn Lozano\u2019s 2007 book Frida Kahlo: El C\u00edrculo de los Afectos. Over time, interest in the site and its archive has grown. For years, Mara Romeo Kahlo, Kahlo\u2019s grandniece and Cristina\u2019s granddaughter, welcomed some researchers and public figures like Salma Hayek into her home, before turning it into a museum.<\/p>\n
Casa Roja shares a moniker similar to Casa Azul\u2014Kahlo\u2019s birthplace, which became a museum in 1958 through a trust established by her partner, the artist Diego Rivera. Casa Azul focuses on Kahlo\u2019s adult life, while Casa Roja will be dedicated to the artist\u2019s childhood with objects ranging from Kahlo\u2019s dolls, clothing and jewellery to personal letters and photographs made by her photographer father, Guillermo. (“Frida\u2019s writing is creative, witty and sharply observant of her time,” says Ana Gardu\u00f1o, a researcher at Mexico\u2019s National Institute of Fine Arts, “revealing her voice and intriguing personality throughout.”) Cross-stitch work Kahlo did at age five, her first oil painting and a recently discovered mural work\u2014believed to be the only one she made\u2014will also be on view.<\/p>\n
Casa Roja will be led by Ad\u00e1n Garc\u00eda Fajardo, who currently serves as the academic director at Mexico City\u2019s Museum of Memory and Tolerance, and overseen by the newly founded Fundaci\u00f3n Kahlo\u2014a New York-based non-profit that champions Latin American art and operates independently from the trust that manages Casa Azul. (That trust, operated by the Bank of Mexico, is currently immersed in controversy; the former director Hilda Trujillo Soto claims that some of Kahlo\u2019s works are missing from the museum<\/a>, an issue carrying serious implications for Mexican heritage.)<\/p>\n Casa Roja will add to Coyoac\u00e1n\u2019s standing as a top destination for Kahlo tourism. The area will now include two Kahlo museums next to selfie-friendly life-size bronze statues and street murals. The new museum is also part of Mexico City\u2019s growing number of hybrid, privately owned cultural spaces\u2014Fundaci\u00f3n Fernando Romero will soon fully open the architect Luis Barrag\u00e1n\u2019s La Cuadra San Crist\u00f3bal<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n Casa Roja further reinforces Kahlo\u2019s seemingly endless global appeal. \u201cKahlo was able to transform the personal into something universal, allowing people to see and feel themselves in her paintings,\u201d says Celia Stahr, the author of Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist (2020), highlighting Kahlo\u2019s raw, vulnerable language.<\/p>\n \u201cThirty years ago, Fridamania was deemed a trend, yet Kahlo\u2019s interest continues to grow beyond her art,\u201d says the Kahlo expert Gregorio Luke. \u201cIn a way, Frida staged her life as an artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n Mara Romeo Kahlo said in a statement: \u201cFrida\u2019s legacy belongs to the world, but it begins here\u2014on this land, in these homes and in the culture that shaped her.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frida Kahlo\u2019s family has announced the 27 September opening of a new museum near the famed Casa Azul…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,77,72208,2132,72209,4842,72207,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-174586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-frida-kahlo","13":"tag-mexico","14":"tag-mexico-city","15":"tag-museums-heritage","16":"tag-new-museums","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114662545056121610","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}