Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca was founded in 1992 by the State Government, after a proposal from a group of artists and citizens. Its aim is to preserve and increase Oaxacan cultural heritage through a space where Modern Art can be admired by the inhabitants and visitors of Oaxaca City.

The Museum site is an old manor built from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the 18th century by the Lazo de la Vega y Pinelo family. The family´s coat of arms can be seen on top of the façade. Though the building is known as "Hernán Cortés House", the conqueror never knew Oaxaca City. This manor was built when he was already dead. The mistake is probably due to the fact that Cortés was entitled, after the conquest, as Marquis of Oaxaca Valley, in 1529, by the Emperor Carlos V.

The Lazo de la Vega y Pinelo manor was owned through the years by different proprietors, until State Government bought it to establish the City Museum in 1986. Six years later, the initiative of artists, citizens and authorities altogether made possible the foundation of the Oaxaca Contemporary Art Museum.

Besides exhibiting Modern Art from the whole world, the Museum periodically shows works by Oaxacan master painters Rufino Tamayo, Francisco Toledo, Rodolfo Morales, Rodolfo Nieto and Francisco Gutiérrez.

Since its opening, the Museum has also shown in its galleries a varied selection of international Modern Art; from Pierre Alechinsky´s maps to traditional African wooden sculptures; from the sculptures by Francisco Zuñiga to the landscape architecture from the age of the Pre-Hispanic king Netzahualcóyotl, since from a viewer who values amazement, a pop work of art is not modern that a Teotihuacan vessel from the 8th century; an African fetish from the metallic structures, reminding those of the hospitals, that Tomas Glasford makes in the 21st Century.

The Museum also has a sculptorial patio and workshops of plastic arts to educate the children in the creative processes of painting, clay modeling and engraving. Besides, the institutions offers guided tours through its galleries.

The ceiling of the stairs of the Museum is a vault, with leftovers of rib in mortar, in which Francisco Toledo works; this probably will be a very important mural.

New proposals in painting, sculpture, photograph, architecture and multimedia will be shown at the Museum Galleries. The institution, founded in a palace of the American Renaissance, continues hosting under the Oaxacan sky, manifestations that give new sense to the plastic.