Museo Tamayo

Oaxacan painter Rufino Tamayo spent his international career collecting his contemporaries - Picasso, Miro, Bacon, Rothko, Dubuffet - and gave the lot to Mexico along with a museum to hold it. Opened in 1981 among the trees of Chapultepec's first section, the building by Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon and Abraham Zabludovsky won national prizes for its stepped concrete masses, which crouch under the ash canopy like a modern echo of a pre-Hispanic platform. Inside, skylit halls alternate between Tamayo's own burning-colored canvases, selections from his international collection, and some of the city's most rigorous contemporary exhibitions - installation, video and commissions that treat the sunken central atrium as raw material. It is the sharp, quiet counterpart to the Anthropology museum across the avenue: compact, seldom crowded midweek, and set in parkland that makes the approach half the pleasure.

What you actually see

• The building - prize-winning stepped concrete under Chapultepec's trees.
• Tamayo's canvases - watermelons, dogs and cosmic figures in saturated color.
• The international collection - Picasso to Bacon, rotated through the halls.
• Contemporary commissions - installations built for the atrium.

When to go

Tuesday to Friday mornings are near-private; Sundays are free and family-busy. Pair with the Anthropology museum opposite while the legs last - Tamayo is the lighter half.

Honest expectations

Displays rotate heavily - Tamayo's own work and the famous names are not all up at once. It is a medium-sized museum; ninety minutes covers it. Closed Mondays.

Nearby

The National Museum of Anthropology across Reforma, Chapultepec Castle up the hill and the park's lake paths all around.