Summary

The Museum of Mexican Women Artists (MUMA) is a virtual museum dedicated to the promotion of Mexican women in visual arts from the 20th century onward. It was founded by Mexican feminist activist and artist Lucero González (b. 1947), who envisioned it as a feminist digital network for artists, curators, and critics to build connections with initiatives across the country and in other parts of the world. It is currently run by a council of nine women who collectively come together to plan its yearly activities and to invite others to participate.

Since 2008, MUMA has hosted a new exhibition every three months by different female curators and artists working mostly on drawing, painting, performance, photography, video, and sculpture. To date, it has organized more than forty online exhibitions and a number of temporary events including exhibitions, reading groups, and public forums across the country. While it has an exclusive focus on women, one of its objectives is to promote intergenerational encounters to discuss the intersections of art and gender and question the binary construction of sexual difference.

MUMA is an important addition to the growing resources on the gendered dimensions of art, feminist art, and art curation in Mexico from the 20th century onward. It offers online galleries showcasing artworks by female artists working in Mexico and contemporary theoretical essays on feminist art and curation, as well as reinterpretations of early 20th-century women’s art. Its bilingual (English and Spanish) website showcases the artistic portfolios of more than 350 artists working in Mexico. Each artist portfolio includes a gallery of artworks, an artist’s statement, and a link to a personal artist website. The exhibition section contains image links to each show. Each exhibition can be viewed in a single window and showcases the works in the exhibition along with a curatorial essay. The program section consists of an archive of all the group’s exhibitions, including theoretical texts and events organized chronologically by year since 2008. The website also has an international news section on relevant art and academic activities, a library section with curatorial texts, book excerpts and theoretical essays, and a list of partner organizations and alliances. MUMA offers an email newsletter to its subscribers with information on current exhibitions and direct links to new artists’ portfolios. It has a search engine that allows the user to explore the website via six different categories which can yield results that cross reference texts, news, links, exhibitions, and artist portfolios.

Throughout its more than twenty years of existence, MUMA’s hybrid model as a virtual museum and digital archive with a temporary physical presence—and as a collective organization—has significantly amplified the visibility of women artists in Mexico.