Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil: Five Shows in San Ángel

Events & Exhibitions · Mexico City

Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil is showing five exhibitions drawn largely from its own collection, and one of them runs to February 2027. It is the most under-visited serious museum in the city.

By Josh Stein · Founder, Art of NOMA, Mexico City · writing on the emerging-art market since 2023

Five shows at once

Carrillo Gil sits in San Ángel, south of the centre, and it is routinely skipped by visitors who go to Jumex and Tamayo and run out of time. That is a mistake. The museum was founded on the collection of Dr Alvar Carrillo Gil and his wife Carmen T. de Carrillo Gil, who bought José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros directly, and deeply, before those names were institutional.

Alvar Carrillo Gil: habitar el arte

The anchor show, running to 7 February 2027, is about the collector rather than only the collection — habitar el arte, to inhabit art. Carrillo Gil was a doctor who lived with the work he bought and eventually gave it to the nation.

If you collect, or are thinking about starting, this is the most directly relevant exhibition in Mexico City this autumn. It is a museum built out of one household’s decisions, made over decades, mostly before the market agreed with them.

Reading a collection out loud

Three of the five shows — Cúmulos y variaciones, Aquí, otros cielos and En un estante, las termitas — all close on 11 October, and all three re-read the museum’s own holdings. Seeing them together is the point: the same collection cut three different ways in adjacent rooms.

Los panteones del performance closes earlier, on 27 September, and looks at performance history — a form Mexico City has an unusually deep record of.

Visiting

The museum is on Avenida Revolución in San Ángel. Pair it with Casa Luis Barragán or the Anahuacalli if you are spending a day in the south of the city; it is nothing like the trip to Polanco, and far quieter.

One practical warning. The museum’s former .com address is no longer under its control and now serves unrelated commercial content. The official site is museodeartecarrillogil.inba.gob.mx.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil — exhibition dates, read 27 Aug 2026

All dates were read from the museum’s own website on 27 August 2026. Exhibition dates change; confirm with the venue before travelling.