Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art
Visiting a Museum in Oaxaca is a grand experience. Besides the exhibits, the Museums also offers the majesty of their Colonial buildings in which they are housed and effecting the visitors more than they would expect.

An important Museum in Oaxaca is the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-hispanic Art, which aside from its beautiful building, adds a unique dimension to the art scene in the City.

The vast collection of archeological pieces from the Meso-American cultures that this Oaxacan artist, Rufino Tamayo, collected over the years was donated to the people of Oaxaca and today forms the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-hispanic Art.

This Museum has 1059 pieces distributed in five permanent exhibit halls where the magnificent settings, designed by the artist himself, sets off each piece whith the color and light which surrounds it and invites the ritual axes and ceramic pieces, Olmecan and Zapotec cultures in the first hall, are a preamble to discover, in the second hall the marvel of the funerary sculpture or the Totonacan, Huastecan or Teotihuacan deities of the third hall.

In the next hall the Mayan culture is concentrated until the end where the tripods pots, the Mixtecan incence burners and the ritual cups tell us about a way of life and thought of those who founded our people.

It´s rare to see a great variety of pieces from different cultures in one place. The intention of Rufino Tamayo was to present these pieces as art, which liberates them from rigidity and he molds them to the building which is an example of the architecture of the XVIIth century and was a nuns´ house, it the belonged to the Villaranza family and now is the seat of this Museum which was inaugurated January 29, 1974.

The Museum is located at Morelos 503, phone 516.4750 and is open everyday from 10 to 14 hrs. and from 16 to 19 hrs, except on Sundays when it is open from 10 to 15 hrs. and it is closed on Tuesday.

free English language tours every Wednesday and Friday at 5PM