Alfredo Guati Rojo National Watercolor Museum

The Alfredo Guati Rojo National Watercolor Museum (Museo Nacional de Acuarela Alfredo Guati Rojo) is the first museum in the world dedicated specifically to watercolor painting. Located in the Coyoacán borough of Mexico City, it was founded by artist Alfredo Guati Rojo and has played a central role in elevating watercolor from a marginalized medium to a recognized fine art form in Mexico and internationally. The institution combines a permanent collection, temporary exhibitions, educational programs, and competitions to promote watercolor painting across periods and geographies.

The museum's origins trace to Alfredo Guati Rojo's broader educational project. In 1954 he established the Instituto de Arte de México at 141 Calle de Puebla in Colonia Roma, offering courses in fine arts and applied arts. On 14 November 1964 he founded the Sociedad Mexicana de Acuarelistas within this institute, and on 21 December 1967 the museum was formally established, opening to the public on 2 January 1968. The museum was private and non-governmental from its inception, funded largely by Guati Rojo's personal resources and the initial 300 works he and his wife Berta Pietrasanta had collected. The collection grew through acquisitions from temporary exhibitions and donations from colleagues and teachers at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. The 1985 Mexico City earthquake destroyed the Colonia Roma building, forcing evacuation of the collection. In April 1987 the city government acquired a neocolonial house on Salvador Novo Street in Coyoacán's Santa Catarina neighborhood and donated it to the museum, though without further financial support. Guati Rojo directed the museum until his death in 2003, just weeks after his wife's passing; his funeral was held at the museum with his ashes displayed beneath his work El circo de la vida.

The museum's permanent collection now exceeds 1,500 works, of which 266 are typically on public display. The holdings span from the pre-Hispanic period to the present, encompassing Mexican and international artists across diverse styles and approaches including figurative painting, portraiture, landscape, and abstraction. The collection was built methodically to show the chronological development of watercolor globally, with particular attention to demonstrating the medium's versatility and artistic legitimacy. The museum also maintains an active acquisition and exhibition program through the Galería Berta Pietrasanta for temporary exhibitions, and it instituted the Premio Nacional de Acuarela and, in 1994, the Bienal Internacional de Acuarela, to stimulate contemporary practice. Educational activities have remained central to the mission, with classes in watercolor and drawing offered on site.

The core of the collection consists of the 300 watercolors donated by Alfredo Guati Rojo and Berta Pietrasanta at the museum's founding. The six permanent galleries are organized chronologically: the Pre-Hispanic Room, 19th-Century Room, International Room, National Room, Contemporary Room, and the Alfredo Guati Rojo Room dedicated to the founder's own work. The pre-Hispanic section addresses the medium's deep roots in Mexican visual culture, displaying clay vessels and codices created with water-based natural pigments. The chronological arrangement allows visitors to trace watercolor's evolution from indigenous traditions through European-influenced 19th-century practice, international modernist developments, and contemporary Mexican and global experimentation. The collection emphasizes the range of thematic and technical approaches possible within watercolor, countering historical prejudices that treated the medium as secondary to oil painting.