Rafael Coronel Museum

The Rafael Coronel Museumis one of the most important art museums in the capital of Zacatecas. The bulk of the collection, rather than consisting of the works of artist, Rafael Coronel, are from his personal collections, most prominently some 10,000 masks collected around Mexico. The collection also includes works by Diego Rivera, fantastic puppets, and religious and colonial-era art works and artifacts.

The museum is housed in the historic, but never quite stable former San Francisco monastery.  It was founded way back in 1567, it was the first in the state. It burned in 1648, and rebuilding began again the next year. It was nationalized by the government in 1855, but somehow never really abandoned by the Franciscans. They continued using the temple until 1924, and thereafter it fell into a dramatic and rather public abandonment. People moved in, modified sections, and took over others. It's a huge complex, after all, and right in the middle of the city. In 1953, a restoration was proposed, but work couldn't really begin until 1987. When the center of Zacatecas was recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1993, the museum, opened in 1990, would be a vital part of that designation. Lots of visitors come simply for the experience of the still partly ruined monastery complex. 

Rafael Coronel Arroyo (1931-2019) was born in Zacatecas and studied the arts, chiefly painting, at the Esmeralda school in Mexico City. Uniquely in the world, the older brother of Rafael, Pedro Coronel (1922-1985), has another museum dedicated to his collection and legacy just across the same neighborhood. Rafael won a prominent prize at a very young age, and continued to exhibit nationally and internationally over the next 60 years. The broadest part of his oeuvre is likely not well understood, in part because like so many 20th century Mexican artists, his trajectory was largely anti-Modernist. While his work is referred to as Retrofuturist, usually in an attempt to connect him with historical movements in Spanish painting, his best works are more fairly compared to contemporaries like Anglo-Irish Francis Bacon who likewise perceived the color field as a battle field and a place of conflicted, meaningful resonance.

The Rafael Coronel Museum is often visited in tandem with some of the other museums in the area, among them the Manuel Felguérez Museum of Abstract Art and the Francisco Goitia Museum. Just south of the giant Ramon Velarde cultural center and complex, the museum is a must-stop for those on a mission to understand the Zacatecas​