The university's contemporary-art museum
Current admission is on the museum's own ticket page.
Official tickets →Opens the museum's own website. Book on the official site; nothing is charged on this page.
The University City campus reads like a museum before you reach one. Juan O'Gorman's stone mosaics wrap the Central Library, Diego Rivera's relief runs along the Olympic stadium, and David Alfaro Siqueiros's murals climb the Rectoria tower. At the southern edge of all this sits MUAC, the university's museum of contemporary art, a long low run of glass and concrete by Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon.
MUAC, the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo, is the largest contemporary art museum on a Mexican university campus. It opened in 2008 and shows art from the 1950s to now, drawn from its own collection and from an ambitious program of temporary exhibitions.
The building is the first thing to take in. Gonzalez de Leon, the architect who also designed the Museo Tamayo, gave MUAC a long glass front and a fan of big, top-lit galleries that can swallow room-sized installations whole. Inside, the balance tips toward the experimental: video, installation, conceptual and political work, Mexican artists shown next to international ones, with the collection reaching back to the postwar avant-garde.
Because so much of the space is given to changing shows, the museum is worth checking before you make the trip. A strong exhibition here can be among the best contemporary art on view anywhere in the city, and the scale of the galleries lets artists attempt things smaller museums cannot hold.
Admission is low, around 75 pesos, roughly five US dollars. Students, teachers and the wider UNAM community pay a reduced rate or nothing, so bring ID if you qualify. The museum opens Wednesday to Sunday and closes Monday and Tuesday.
That two-day closure trips people up, so note it early: unlike most museums in the city, MUAC is shut on both Monday and Tuesday. Hours shift with the season and with events on campus, so check the museum's own site for the current day before you travel out, since this is not a place you want to reach and find closed.
| Detail | What to know |
|---|---|
| Admission | Around 75 pesos (about $5); reduced or free for students and the UNAM community |
| Open | Wednesday to Sunday (closed Monday and Tuesday); check the day's hours |
| Where | Centro Cultural Universitario, Ciudad Universitaria, south of the city |
| Getting there | Metro Universidad (Line 3), then the free Pumabus across campus |
| Pair with | The Central Library murals and the Espacio Escultorico |
Give MUAC an hour and a half to two hours, and treat the journey as a half-day rather than a quick stop. Ciudad Universitaria is well to the south of the centre, so this is a deliberate trip, not something you drop into between other sights.
What makes the distance pay is everything around the museum. The whole campus is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and a short walk from MUAC you reach Juan O'Gorman's mosaic-covered Central Library, the murals on the Rectoria tower and the Olympic stadium, and the Espacio Escultorico, a ring of concrete and volcanic rock built in 1979 by a group of Mexican sculptors including Helen Escobedo and Mathias Goeritz. Metro Universidad on Line 3 is the usual way in, and the free Pumabus loops around the campus from there.
On a southern day, the museums that chain naturally with MUAC are the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera sites in Coyoacan and further south, all on the way back toward the centre. The Blue House runs timed, online-only tickets that sell out days ahead, so book it before anything else.
A full day in the south could run MUAC and the campus murals in the morning, then Casa Azul and Diego Rivera's volcanic-stone Anahuacalli in Coyoacan, both covered by one ticket, with the reopened Museo Dolores Olmedo in Xochimilco if you still have energy. It is a lot of ground, so pick two and do them properly.
For anyone serious about contemporary art, yes. MUAC shows work at a scale and ambition the central museums rarely match, in a building that is itself a piece of modern architecture, on a campus that is a landmark in its own right.
The honest part is the effort. This is the furthest of the city's major museums from the tourist centre, and a casual visitor short on time may get more from the Tamayo or MAM in Chapultepec. But if contemporary art is the reason you came, or if the University City murals and the Espacio Escultorico are on your list anyway, MUAC is the strongest single reason to make the trip south.
MUAC, the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo, is UNAM's museum of contemporary art on the Ciudad Universitaria campus. It opened in 2008 in a building by Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon and shows art from the 1950s to the present.
Admission is low, around 75 pesos, about five US dollars. Students, teachers and the UNAM community pay a reduced rate or enter free with ID.
MUAC opens Wednesday to Sunday and closes on Monday and Tuesday. Hours vary with the season and campus events, so check the official site for the current day before travelling out.
It is in the Centro Cultural Universitario at Ciudad Universitaria, in the south of the city. Take Metro Universidad on Line 3, then the free Pumabus that loops around the campus.
The UNAM campus itself: Juan O'Gorman's mosaic murals on the Central Library, the murals on the Rectoria tower and Olympic stadium, and the Espacio Escultorico, a ring of volcanic rock built in 1979. Further out, the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera sites in Coyoacan and Xochimilco round out a southern day.
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