The National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago is presenting ‘Vivir la Tierra: Acquisitions from the Permanent Collection 2010–2026’, an exhibition bringing together more than 40 works acquired by the institution over the past 16 years. The show is on view from August 15, 2026, through February 7, 2027, in the Rubin & Paula Torres Gallery.
Spanning the late 19th century to the present, the exhibition includes photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation and video. Its central subject is tierra—land—understood by the museum as a living archive of belonging, labor, memory and embodied knowledge. Rather than treating land solely as territory, the exhibition examines it as a relationship shaped by care, experience and collective life.
According to the museum, the presentation moves from early photographic representations of the Mexican landscape to contemporary investigations of land and identity. Other themes include migration, collective labor and community formation in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Across these strands, the works address the ways artists have reimagined land through movement, placemaking and acts of resistance.
The exhibition is curated by Alivé Piliado. Participating artists include Gordon C. Abbot, Hugo Brehme, Carlos Cortéz, Charles Frazier, William Henry Jackson, Laura Aguilar, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Ana Hernández, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Nicole Marroquin, Otto Martín Moreno, Antonio Perez, Marcos Raya, Osuna, Navarro, Linda Vallejo and Mariana Yampolsky. The roster includes artists active in different periods and working across the exhibition’s varied media.
The museum’s online exhibition page identifies Yampolsky’s ‘Untitled (Las Pozas, Xilitla, San Luis Potosí)’ (1996), a gelatin silver print, as one work in the presentation. The photograph entered the National Museum of Mexican Art’s permanent collection in 2022 as a gift from the artist. The exhibition’s broader selection reflects the institution’s recent collecting history while connecting historical depictions of place with contemporary questions of identity and community.
Founded in 1982, the National Museum of Mexican Art is located at 1852 West 19th Street in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. The museum says its programs and exhibitions represent the Mexican community from its own point of view and voice, encompassing Mexican cultural expressions and art forms from ancient to modern and on both sides of the border. Admission is always free; regular hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
