Marco, a northern view of contemporary art

This museum is part of the world art scene as one of the most important of its kind in Latin America. It has exhibited works by figures such as Ai Weiwei and Ron Mueck, but it has also been a platform for creators from the north.
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Monterrey (MARCO) is today one of the most important cultural venues, not only in Mexico, but in all of Latin America, focused on the preservation and dissemination of contemporary art. When it was inaugurated in 1991, there were few national spaces that opened their doors to this type of innovative artistic expression. The few museums that had a place, such as the Tamayo, the Universitario del Chopo or the Carrillo Gil, were all in the then Federal District. In fact, practically all of the country's cultural activity was concentrated in the capital, so the creation of MARCO was a spearhead in the decentralization of culture, making it accessible to a larger part of the Mexican population.
The idea of giving life to MARCO arose in 1989, when Monterrey philanthropist Márgara Garza Sada, who had already participated in the founding of the Tamayo Museum, joined forces with businessman Diego Sada to provide the city of Monterrey, whose economy stood out in the nascent neoliberalism that followed the financial crisis of 1982, with a space where the most relevant modern and contemporary works could be exhibited at a national and international level.

“Just as the Tec de Monterrey, the UDEM and the Universidad Regiomontana were formed, a cultural avenue had to be started in Nuevo León to balance reason with the heart,” declared last year Alfonso Romo, member of the Board of Founding Directors of MARCO, to Proceso. Indeed, it was a region with an increasingly prosperous industrial sector that was ready to grow in other areas.

Cemex, Grupo CYDSA, Grupo IMSA, Grupo Industrial Alfa and Vitro were some of the consortiums that supported this project, together with the state and federal governments. The amount invested for its completion was 10.5 million dollars at that time (around 25 million today). Thus, MARCO would become one of the most emblematic points of the Macroplaza-Parque Fundidora cultural circuit, which also began to be promoted at that time.

This important Monterrey museum is located on the corner of Zuazua and Padre Raymundo Jardón streets, next to one of the ends of the Macroplaza, in the heart of Monterrey. Its façade stands out for its shapes that combine tradition and modernity, its vibrant colors and, above all, for the monumental bronze dove —a sculpture by the Mexican plastic artist Juan Soriano— that with its six meters of height invites the passerby to take a look at the jewels kept within its walls. The two-story building, designed by the famous architect Ricardo Legorreta, occupies a surface area of just over 16,000 square meters, on which 13 rooms are distributed, 11 of which are temporary, that is, they host exhibitions for certain periods of time and then welcome a new art show.
In its more than thirty years, MARCO has received more than 5.7 million visitors — around half have entered for free thanks to the institution's various programs — who were able to enjoy one of the 272 exhibitions that have been held here, of which 162 have been individual. In the rest — that is, the collective exhibitions — more than two thousand artists have participated. It is, therefore, a space that attests to the evolution of art in our era.

BEGINNINGS AND LATIN AMERICAN ART

MARCO began its journey on June 28, 1991, with an unprecedented exhibition: Myth and Magic in America: the Eighties, the first art exhibition in Latin America that brought together works from all over the continent. Projects of such magnitude had only seen the light of day in the United States, but now a reading of continental creation was presented from a Hispanic territory.

Three hundred pieces occupied the 11 temporary rooms of the museum, in a tour that brought together 61 artists from 17 countries. In the exhibition, curated by Miguel Cervantes and Charles Merewethe, a search for identity could be seen in the different American latitudes. In the case of Mexico, for example, it was notable that this identity was no longer so rooted in the Revolution to move to more ancestral roots, to a more remote past.
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