On July 19, 2026, the exhibition "Relatos modernos. Obras emblemáticas de la Colección Gelman Santander" closes at the Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM) with more than 310,000 visitors, a record for the venue. The show then begins a tour through Spain, Switzerland, and Norway featuring work by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Rufino Tamayo.

The collection brings together 68 pieces from a total holdings of 90 works, with central figures of twentieth-century Mexican art including José Clemente Orozco, María Izquierdo, Francisco Toledo, and Gunther Gerzso, alongside Kahlo, Rivera, and Tamayo. Of the exhibited pieces, 27 hold the designation of Artistic Monument, which requires their departure from Mexico to be authorized through temporary export permits, as detailed by Proceso based on an annex from the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL). The collaboration agreement among INBAL, the owners, and the Fundación Banco Santander (which lends its name to the collection) covers conservation, transport, and supervision of the works throughout the tour, without involving any transfer of ownership or sale to foreign institutions.

The international tour opens in September 2026 at the Faro Santander in Spain. From January to May 2027, the collection will be shown at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, one of Europe's most prestigious venues for modern art. The third stop is the National Museum of Norway, from June to November 2027. The works are scheduled to return to Mexico in 2028, when the complete collection will be exhibited at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), according to El Universal. The MAM exhibition also included pieces by Jesús Reyes Ferreira, Carlos Mérida, and Lola Álvarez Bravo, figures representing distinct currents of Mexican modernism assembled by Jacques and Natasha Gelman beginning in the 1940s.

For the Mexican community in North America, the tour is a window onto twentieth-century Mexican art across three first-tier European museums. Upon its return to Monterrey in 2028, the collection will reclaim its standing as one of the most important private modern art holdings in Latin America.

This article was written with artificial intelligence assistance based on verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.