Image: Mariana Yampolsky (1925 -2002), Untitled (Las Pozas, Xilitla, San Luis Potosí), 1996, gelatin silver print, 5" x 7", NMMA Permanent Collection, 2022.143, Gift of the artist
The National Museum of Mexican Art opened 'Vivir la Tierra: Acquisitions from the Permanent Collection 2010–2026' in the Rubin & Paula Torres Gallery on August 15, 2026, and the exhibition runs through February 7, 2027. The exhibition draws from the museum’s Permanent Collection and brings together more than forty works acquired over the last sixteen years, with a span that reaches from the late nineteenth century to the present.
The show takes tierra, or land, as its central theme. Museum text describes it as a living archive of belonging, labor, memory and embodied knowledge, and says the exhibition moves from early photographic representations of the Mexican landscape to contemporary artistic explorations of land and identity. It also includes works that address migration, collective labor and community formation in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood.
'Vivir la Tierra' is curated by Alivé Piliado. The museum says the exhibition considers land not as territory, but as a lived relationship shaped by care, experience and collective becoming in continuous transformation. That framing places the exhibition within wider debates around landscape, identity and the ways artists have represented place as both material and social experience.
The exhibition includes work across photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation and video. Among the participating artists listed by the museum are Gordon C. Abbot, Hugo Brehme, Carlos Cortéz, William Henry Jackson, Laura Aguilar, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Nicole Marroquin, Linda Vallejo and Mariana Yampolsky, alongside additional artists including Ana Hernández, Otto Martín Moreno, Antonio Perez and Marcos Raya. The museum also notes artists identified only by surname or as active in the first half of the 20th century, reflecting the collection’s broad historical sweep.
A work by Mariana Yampolsky is used in the exhibition announcement: 'Untitled (Las Pozas, Xilitla, San Luis Potosí),' 1996, a gelatin silver print from the NMMA Permanent Collection, identified as a gift of the artist (gelatin silver print, 5" x 7", accession 2022.143). The museum’s online listing dates the exhibition from August 15, 2026, to February 7, 2027.
The opening falls in a busy week at the museum's Pilsen home at 1852 W 19th Street. 'Images of Faith: 3,000 Years of Spiritual Expressions in Mexico' closed on 16 August 2026, 'Xochicago' runs in the Xicágo Gallery until 4 October 2026, and the museum's Sonido Fest took place in Harrison Park on 15 August from 2 pm to 10 pm. Admission to the museum is free, and it is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm.
