Hilda Trujillo Soto, the adjunct director and later director of the Diego Rivera Anahuacalli and Frida Kahlo museums in Mexico Metropolis from 2002 to 2020, has accused the belief that oversees each museums of mismanagement and negligence in an intensive weblog submit printed on 2 April.
Trujillo Soto’s most explosive declare is that in 2009 and 2013, the trustees turned a blind eye when introduced with proof that works belonging to the museum dedicated to Kahlo, often known as the Casa Azul, could have been stolen and offered to personal collectors within the US.
The works of Rivera (1886-1957) and Kahlo (1907-54) maintain pleasure of place within the Mexican creativeness and are accorded particular safety below Mexican legislation. As “creative monuments of the nation” they are often purchased and offered inside Mexico however could solely go away the nation quickly, until the Institute of Advantageous Arts and Literature (INBAL) points a particular export allow.
In response to Trujillo Soto’s allegations, the INBAL issued an announcement on 3 April clarifying that it had not issued such permits for “everlasting exports” of works by Rivera or Kahlo.
Along with their works’ particular authorized standing, in 1955 Rivera positioned the collections of the Museo Anahuacalli and the Casa Azul in a belief managed by Mexico’s central financial institution, the Financial institution of Mexico (Banxico). Rivera charged the belief (Fideicomiso de los Museos Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo) with operating the museums and sustaining their collections “for the folks of Mexico”, and for that goal granted the belief copyright over his oeuvre in addition to these works by Kahlo discovered within the Casa Azul. When Rivera died, his longtime patron, Dolores Olmedo, gained management of the belief’s governing physique (Comité Técnico) and served because the director of each museums till her loss of life in 2002. Her son, Carlos Phillips Olmedo, succeeded her as director common of the museums. That very same yr, the belief employed Trujillo Soto as adjunct director; she was elevated to director in 2009.
“It has been a while since I’ve identified that a number of works by Frida Kahlo have disappeared from the Casa Azul,” says Helga Prignitz-Poda, a German artwork historian who’s the foremost specialist perilon Kahlo and co-editor of her catalogue raisonné. “I wish to thank [Trujillo Soto] for bringing this reality to gentle.” Linda Downs, the previous govt director of the Faculty Artwork Affiliation (CAA) and a specialist on Rivera, additionally confirmed to The Artwork Newspaper that in 2014 she grew to become conscious of lacking notebooks and sketches by Rivera from the Casa Azul archive. Representatives for the Casa Azul didn’t reply to requests for touch upon lacking works from the gathering and archive. In interviews with The Artwork Newspaper, Trujillo Soto reaffirmed the small print of her submit concerning the lacking works.
In a public response to Trujillo Soto on 3 April, the belief launched an announcement that reads partially: “The individual making these accusations in the present day by no means filed a proper grievance throughout their skilled affiliation with the belief. Quite the opposite, their contract was terminated after irregularities had been detected of their administration and for having benefited third events with the property below their care.”
‘Administrative irregularities’
In October 2020 Phillips Olmedo and the trustees knowledgeable Trujillo Soto that her position as director was being made redundant and issued a press launch naming her as an adviser for particular initiatives. Trujillo Soto sued the belief in February 2021, alleging she had ceased to obtain her wage. In response to her lawyer, María del Rocío Pecina Castro, the dispute is now earlier than the Seventh Chamber of the Federal Tribunal of Conciliation and Arbitration of Mexico. “If benefiting third events means hiring certified specialists and never making an attempt to do every little thing in-house, then sure, that’s what I do,” Trujillo Soto tells The Artwork Newspaper. Requested in regards to the alleged irregularities in her administration, she says: “Allow them to show it.”
On the coronary heart of Trujillo Soto’s allegations of negligence and mismanagementat the belief and the museums are two separate episodes suggesting works could have been stolen from the Casa Azul. The primary entails the diary saved by Kahlo over the last ten years of her life. It had been on show within the Casa Azul till 2003, when, in accordance with Trujillo Soto, Phillips Olmedo eliminated it from its case and positioned it in a protected in a rest room on the Casa Azul. By 2009 the museum had acquired new tools that necessitated shifting the outdated protected. Trujillo Soto employed a locksmith to open the protected, whose contents had been then inventoried by the workers. Whereas evaluating the diary to its facsimile, the workers realised it was lacking six folios.
Paperwork included in Trujillo Soto’s submit and reviewed by The Artwork Newspaper state that she instantly knowledgeable Banxico’s trustee on the Comité Técnico, José Luis Pérez Arredondo, who retired from Banxico final yr as head of inside audits. Pérez Arredondo didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark. In response to Trujillo Soto, Phillips Olmedo, then director common, was himself current within the Casa Azul when workers realised there have been pages lacking from the diary. Phillips Olmedo didn’t reply to The Artwork Newspaper’s repeated requests for remark.
In 2018 an inside restructuring positioned the Comité Técnico below the supervision of Banxico’s new Workplace of Monetary Training and Cultural Improvement, headed by Jessica Serrano Bandala. In response to Trujillo Soto, the incident associated to the diary’s lacking folios was communicated to Serrano Bandala. Serrano Bandala didn’t reply to The Artwork Newspaper’s repeated requests for remark. Banxico’s present trustee on the Comité Técnico, Luis Rodrigo Saldaña Arellano, additionally didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark. The whereabouts of the six diary folios stay unknown.
The second episode outlined in Trujillo Soto’s submit dates from 2013. In 2011-12, Phillips Olmedo, then director common, employed outdoors researchers to check Rivera’s notarised stock from 1957 of objects in each the Anahuacalli and the Casa Azul with the museums’ collections. In response to Trujillo Soto, when the researchers delivered their findings to Phillips Olmedo and José Luis Pérez Arredondo, proof recommended that a number of works from the 1957 stock had been lacking, with public sale information suggesting they’d been offered within the US. Neither Pérez Arredondo nor Phillips Olmedo responded to The Artwork Newspaper’s repeated requests for touch upon this inside investigation. In response to Trujillo Soto, Serrano Bandala additionally discovered of the outcomes of the investigation someday between 2018 and 2020. Serrano Bandala and Saldaña Arellano didn’t reply to The Artwork Newspaper’s repeated requests for remark about these lacking objects within the belief’s care.
A number of lacking works
Among the many lacking objects by Kahlo listed in Rivera’s 1957 stock are the 1954 portray Frida in Flames; the 1952 portray Congress of Peoples for Peace; American Liberty, an undated work on paper; the 1932 drawing The Solar Peeked By the Window; 4 undated pencil-on-paper works: Portrait of Irene Bohus, Drawing for Brewery, Fantasy of a Range and Half Object; the 1935 drawing My Bedpan Doesn’t Love Me Anymore; the 1936 drawing Examine for “My Grandparents, My Mother and father and Me”; and a print and eight proofs of the 1932 lithograph The Abortion, considered one of which is inscribed “19a” and “últimas pruebas” (ultimate proofs).
In response to Trujillo Soto, these had been doubtless offered by means of the New York-based gallery Mary-Anne Martin Advantageous Artwork, which specialises in Mexican and Latin American Fashionable artwork. On 4 April the gallery’s web site was inaccessible for a number of hours. Since then it has come again on-line and its web page for Kahlo lists her dates however no different data or stock. The location has beforehand listed at the very least two of the works allegedly lacking from the Casa Azul: Frida in Flames (below the title “Self-Portrait Inside a Sunflower”) and American Liberty. Martin didn’t reply to The Artwork Newspaper’s repeated requests for remark.
Sofía Lacayo Remy, a former worker of the gallery, tells The Artwork Newspaper that between 1996 and 2001 she dealt with a number of works on paper by Kahlo, together with prints of The Abortion. In response to Lacayo Remy, the gallery didn’t use Rivera’s 1957 stock for provenance analysis throughout these years.
Trujillo Soto’s claims come at a time when the belief is finalising mortgage agreements for the deliberate exhibition Frida: The Making of an Icon on the Museum of Advantageous Arts, Houston, resulting from open on 18 January 2026, then travelling to Tate Fashionable in London. In response to an inquiry about Trujillo Soto’s allegations, a spokesperson for the MFAH says: “We’re not ready to have any information of the actions of earlier administrations of the Casa Azul. We’ve got been impressed by the professionalism and dedication of the present administration.” A spokesperson for Tate says: “It wouldn’t be for Tate to touch upon one other organisation.”
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