The FEMSA Collection has, since its founding in 1977, become a benchmark holding in Mexico and Latin America, providing visibility into an art scene that, until recently, remained largely underrepresented in international museum collections despite the global expansion of the Latin American diaspora. Behind it is FEMSA, a Latin American multinational conglomerate operating across retail, beverages, healthcare and digital financial services. Its businesses include OXXO, European retailer Valora, pharmacy operations, Spin by OXXO and Coca-Cola FEMSA, the world’s largest Coca-Cola bottler by sales volume. The company employs more than 392,000 people in 18 countries and is included in several major sustainability and ESG indices and rankings, to which its art collection and related initiatives contribute significantly.
On the occasion of its coming 50th anniversary, the FEMSA Collection is presenting a series of exhibitions at institutions across Mexico and Colombia, beginning with “Constellations and Drifts: Latin American Art from the FEMSA Collection.” The most comprehensive presentation of the collection in Mexico in its nearly five-decade history, the exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (on view through August 30) was curated by Eugenia Braniff, Paulina Bravo and Beto Díaz Suárez, curators of the FEMSA Collection, with independent curator Adriana Melchor.
Additional shows are planned at the Museo Amparo in Puebla, Mexico (September 26, 2026 through January 24, 2027), the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín in Colombia (March 18 – November 15, 2027) and the Museo Cabañas in Guadalajara, Mexico (October 16 – March 5, 2028. At each venue, the selection and presentation will be adapted and contextualized in relation to the institution and its collection, as well as the communities with which the exhibition will interact.
In July, FEMSA unveiled a newly commissioned work by Mexican artist Jaime Ruiz Martínez, created in collaboration with the Arts Initiative of the School of Architecture, Art and Design (EAAD), the Behavioral Research Lab and the Sports Medicine Department at Tecnológico de Monterrey. On the occasion of the unveiling, Observer spoke with Bravo, chief curator of the collection, and Braniff, associate curator and advisor, to discuss the collection’s history, evolution and current priorities as FEMSA continues its mission to expand the awareness of and deepen the appreciation for modern and contemporary Mexican and Latin American art and art history.
Braniff and Bravo described the FEMSA Collection as an institution that grew organically, eventually developing into a collection of nearly 1,400 works. Its origins lie in the donation of a painting by Dr. Atl from a relative of the founding family. Born Gerardo Murillo Coronado in Guadalajara, Dr. Atl (1875–1964) was a lesser-known but important Mexican artist who was not only an influential precursor to Mexican muralism but also an active writer, volcanologist and intellectual. He was also close to Luis Barragán and encouraged the architect to develop the southern part of Mexico City. According to Braniff, who also has direct family ties to the collection, that first gift established the collaborative character that has guided it since.
The collection initially developed via the Museo de Monterrey, created because the city lacked a museum capable of presenting both local and international artists. Braniff recalls her grandmother and her sister-in-law traveling widely and bringing exhibitions to Monterrey that local audiences otherwise would not have had the chance to see. In its early years, acquisitions emerged gradually and spontaneously from that activity rather than from a strategic collecting plan.
The collection later developed along a parallel and complementary route with the launch of the FEMSA Biennial. Initially based in Monterrey and structured around acquisition prizes, it later became an invitation-based, itinerant program presented in different parts of Mexico. When the Museo de Monterrey closed in the 2000s, the corporation chose to circulate the collection nationally, adopting an itinerant model rather than maintaining a single permanent venue. “This model allows us to adapt to each host museum and to create a dialogue with its collection, when it has one,” Braniff explains.
About five years ago, the collection undertook a formal restructuring of its acquisition strategy. Its primary focus remains Latin America, particularly Mexico, while also including artists of other nationalities who live in the region or whose practices are substantially rooted in Latin American histories and conditions.
Acquisitions today are made by a board and committee with an annual budget after a curatorial team develops proposals and presents them for discussion and approval. The discovery process involves studio visits and ongoing dialogues with artists and researchers, Bravo says. “We organize internal curatorial seminars with external specialists. We are not experts in everything, so we make sure to speak with people who have expertise in different areas of 20th- and 21st-century modern and contemporary art.” The curators also work closely with artists via commissions and with galleries. “The acquisition committee helps us discuss and evaluate each acquisition proposal and determine whether it strengthens our curatorial lines.”
The 50th-anniversary exhibition was conceived to condense five decades of collecting and research into a clear account of the collection’s curatorial priorities. “It is essentially about answering questions about what we collect,” Braniff clarifies. “We had to find a way to condense 50 years of research, work and collecting. We decided to present the principal lines of our curatorial practice and investigation: alchemy, territories, colonial structures, abstraction and identities.”
Asked about the themes most important to artists in the region today, the curators emphasized territory, a term that encompasses the contested meaning of Latin America, national and cross-border relationships, migration, self-identity, urban life, rural life and relationships with nature. Bravo points to Rafa Esparza, an artist who frequently addresses identity and territory through the experience of working in the United States. “We are also interested in how artists address local conditions, including what it means to live in cities rather than in the countryside and how people relate to nature,” she says. “These are not basic questions, but they are very tangible ways in which artists engage with their context and generate critical thought through artistic practice.”
Territory is never uniform, Braniff adds: “The relationship to territory is not the same for a Chilean artist as it is for an artist from Mexico. Even within Mexico, it is not the same to come from the south as it is to come from the north, near the California border. Territory does not condemn an artist to a particular identity or practice, but it is highly influential in shaping who the artist becomes and how the practice develops.”
“Constellations and Drifts” includes 170 works from the 20th and 21st Centuries. Its transgenerational structure is intended to reveal continuities among artists working at different moments. Rather than following a chronology, the curators placed historical figures such as Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros in dialogue with contemporary artists who address related regional concerns through different media and perspectives, contextualizing their practices within a broader artistic and cultural history.
The curators see historical framing as central to the collection’s mission. “We cannot talk about the 2000s without discussing the turn of the century and the artists of the 1990s,” Braniff argues. Contemporary Latin American art, she continues, cannot be understood without the work of earlier figures such as Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Siqueiros, Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo, since artists of the 1990s and 2000s often revisit concerns already present in earlier periods, albeit through different forms and political frameworks. “In the 1920s, there was an entire generation of artists who were in Paris and New York and were representing what Mexico was according to them.”
For the show, the curators developed an active public program that extends into the museum restaurant. “We wanted the experience to take place not only in the galleries but also in the mouth,” Bravo explains.
Rather than traveling in toto, the exhibition will evolve from venue to venue, shaped by each. “We cannot ignore that another collection is already there. We also will not have the same space,” says Braniff. “It is an itinerant program, and that is why the idea of constellations and drifts works: we can expand one constellation and make another smaller. It allows us to move and adapt the curatorial focus.”
Although Latin American artists have recently gained greater visibility at international biennials and art fairs, and the market for Latin American modern art has risen consistently, particularly with the rediscovery of Surrealist figures such as Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, much of the region’s art history remains largely unfamiliar to international audiences and has yet to be adequately represented in major institutions.
FEMSA is in discussions with institutions in Europe and the United States about future collaborations and maintains an active international loan program. “Our Frida Kahlo is currently traveling and will go on to another venue. She is obviously one of the rock stars of the collection,” Braniff says, adding that works from the collection travel frequently to museums in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the United States. The Frida Kahlo painting, unsurprisingly, is among the most requested.
Commissions and new production, meanwhile, are treated as inseparable from the collection’s mission. Each project is considered individually, with the team determining whether a commissioned work should be added to the collection or installed in a public setting, such as a park, to maximize its impact. “It cannot be separate from our mission as a collection, which is to support the production of Latin American artists and to produce and create knowledge about Latin America,” the curators maintain.
The collection is part of FEMSA’s corporate sustainability division. Its staff reports not only on the collection’s growth but also on its social and cultural impact in the communities where the company operates. This work is included in the corporation’s annual reporting, which positions the traveling exhibitions and related programs within a broader sustainability strategy designed to generate social and cultural impact in the communities the collection reaches.
Looking ahead, strengthening the collection’s role in presenting a contemporary perspective on Latin American art is priority one. “We still believe there is a great deal to show the world about the contributions Latin American art made in the 20th Century and continues to make today,” Bravo explains. “We have always been focused on Latin American art and will continue to be, but through a contemporary lens that also looks back at the past.”
They also want to highlight the ways artists engage with the questions and challenges of the present from particular, specific positions. “Latin America has the capacity to think very locally but also very globally. That is an important reference point we want the world to understand,” she says. “These artists have been doing extraordinary work addressing issues that are important within the region but also highly relevant to the global problems we face today.”
Continuing to support younger artists is another priority. “Supporting production can happen through commissions, publications, research grants and other forms,” Braniff adds. “That would be my wish list: to help the artistic community of which we are part feel supported by us.”
