The Museo Rufino Tamayo is an art museum in the city of Oaxaca, Oaxaca

Oaxaca, Oaxaca

The city and municipality of Oaxaca de Juárez, or simply Oaxaca, is the capital and largest city of the Mexican state of the same name . It is located in the Centro District in the Central Valleys region of the state, in the foothills of the Sierra Madre at the base of the Cerro del Fortín...

, in southern Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

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Housed in a building constructed in 1979 by the architects Teodoro González de León

Teodoro González de León

Teodoro González de León is a Mexican architect.- Biography :Gonzales de León studied at the Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México from 1942 to 1947. Thanks to a scholarship by the French government, he worked in France for 18 months with Le Corbusier,...

 and Abraham Zabludovsky

Abraham Zabludovsky (architect)

Abraham Zabludovsky was a Mexican architect. He was the brother of the well-known journalist Jacobo Zabludovsky....

, the museum contains collections of pre-Columbian

Pre-Columbian

The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...

 art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 once owned by artist Rufino Tamayo

Rufino Tamayo

Rufino Tamayo was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico. Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences....

. One of the chief purposes of the museum was to collect the pieces and to preserve them from falling into the hands of illegal

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 artifact

Artifact (archaeology)

An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...

 traders

Merchant

A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...

. Tamayo left the museum to his native state of Oaxaca

Oaxaca

Oaxaca , , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 571 municipalities; of which 418 are governed by the system of customs and traditions...

 to make his fellow Mexicans aware of their rich heritage. The attractive displays are arranged according to aesthetic theme.

Tamayo also has another museum in Mexico City

Mexico City

Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...

, the Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum

Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum

Mexico's Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum , located on Paseo de la Reforma, in Mexico City, was opened in 1981 as a repository for the collection that Rufino Tamayo and his wife Olga acquired during their lifetimes and ultimately gifted to the nation...

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