“This museum was house to the Kahlo household for 4 generations; we open it to share our legacy.” Thus reads an indication on the entrance of Museo Casa Kahlo, a brand new establishment devoted to Frida Kahlo that opened on 27 September.
Reminiscences, household ties and storytelling form the intimate house, positioned a five-minute stroll from Casa Azul in Mexico Metropolis’s Coyoacán neighbourhood—Kahlo’s central pilgrimage enclave. The museum is housed contained in the Kahlo household’s historic house, acquired in 1930 and later owned by Frida’s youthful sister, Cristina, who handed it all the way down to her descendants.
“The museum resulted from over ten years of household efforts,” Mara de Anda Romeo, Frida’s great-granddaughter, tells The Artwork Newspaper. Museo Casa Kahlo’s assortment comes from the archive of Isolda Kahlo (Cristina’s daughter), who stored it personal for years earlier than cataloguing it. “Isolda additionally stored many on a regular basis objects—even some taps—that had been reinstated,” De Anda says.
The museum’s narrative centres on Frida’s household—alternating between a deal with conventional shows, personal home areas and audiovisual components. Within the first rooms, Frida’s father, Guillermo, who impressed his daughter early on, seems by way of his pictures of Mexico’s structure and an immersive re-creation of his darkroom.
The kitchen at Museo Casa Kahlo Photograph: Constanza Ontiveros Valdés
In most areas, nonetheless, the main focus is on Frida’s ties to the opposite ladies in her household, expressed by way of letters, the archive’s most important holdings. (“We come from an empowered and tight female lineage,” De Anda says.) Letters are reworked into audio recordings, projections or wallpaper. In Cristina’s bed room, a wall reveals a 1946 letter that Frida wrote after surgical procedure; excerpts from different correspondence are projected within the eating room. A number of artistic endeavors, like sketches and Tray of Poppies—painted in Frida’s youth—are scattered all through. These seem alongside private objects, pre-Hispanic bead necklaces and conventional attire, all reflecting Frida’s world.
Museo Casa Kahlo, nicknamed Casa Roja and “the household’s coronary heart”, can not escape comparisons to Casa Azul, which is way bigger in each scale and scope. But the household says the main focus right here is completely different.
“Casa Azul is the artist, and right here is Frida in flesh and bone who cried and laughed,” Mara Romeo Kahlo, Cristina’s grand-daughter, mentioned on the ribbon-cutting ceremony on 25 September. (She lived in the home till 2023.)
Nonetheless, shared motifs emerge between the 2 homes—as within the case of their kitchens. Like at Casa Roja, Casa Azul options bird-themed wall decorations. Right here, clay-outlined doves maintain a ribbon, a motif repeated in furnishings items and pottery dishes. That is no shock: Frida beloved birds, a motif usually seen in her artwork.
The kitchen at Museo Casa Kahlo, like the home’s different areas, has been restored to its authentic look. Frida’s solely identified mixed-media mural work (from round 1949) options flowering fruit bushes and small vibrant birds on a pale pink background.
“Years in the past, Isolda had lined a part of the mural in white paint, however my mom remembered it was there and guided the restorers to uncover it in 2024,” De Anda says. Restoration additionally revealed the ribbon’s phrase, El mesón de los gurriones—a humorous pun on gorrones (freeloaders) and gorriones (sparrows)—referring to “the fixed presence of Frida’s college students, the Fridos”, De Anda says. She provides {that a} detailed examine of the mural is deliberate.
Frida Kahlo’s secret room within the basement Photograph: Rafael Gamo for Rockwell Group
The home’s basement, accessible through a steep staircase, is the place Frida as soon as retreated to color and write. One room shows framed household letters revealing Frida’s affectionate, tender facet.
“Isolda, my expensive, it is a present out of your aunt Fisita, who adores you, in recognition of your good behaviour and the trail you might be starting,” reads a 1945 letter from the artist. An adjoining room re-creates a studio house with ex-votos (devotional photos), one by Frida.
“Her hidden basement is the center of the expertise: a candlelit house the place Frida’s inventive power feels tangible,” says the architect David Rockwell, who designed this and different areas in the home, together with the courtyard. (The Mexican architect Mariana Doet Zepeda Orozco oversaw renovations.)
To the Kahlo household, Museo Casa Kahlo extends to the just lately established New York-based non-profit Fundación Kahlo, which helps the museum and champions Latin American artwork. “That is a part of the household’s combat to inform a narrative that was denied to them,” says Adán García Fajardo, the Museo Casa Kahlo’s director. (The Kahlo household has lengthy contested the management of the artist’s picture by the Frida Kahlo Company, which holds worldwide rights.)
Though uneven in some points, the museum conveys a common reality: household bonds are all the pieces, particularly in hardship. That is what most humanises Frida’s legendary determine.
