Vivir la Tierra Acquisitions from the Permanent Collection 2010–2026

Drawing from the National Museum of Mexican Art Permanent Collection, Vivir la Tierra brings together more than forty works acquired over the last sixteen years, spanning the late nineteenth century to the present across photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and video. The exhibition explores tierra (land) as a living archive of belonging, labor, memory, and embodied knowledge. Moving from early photographic representations of the Mexican landscape to contemporary artistic explorations of land and identity, and to works that address migration, collective labor, and community formation in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Within these threads, the exhibition reveals how artists have constantly reimagined la tierra as a place shaped by movement, placemaking, and acts of resistance. Land is understood not as territory, but as a lived relationship shaped by care, experience, and collective becoming in continuous transformation.