Gelman Collection Set to Return to Mexico by 2028 After Spain Transfer Draws Scrutiny
Fundación Banco Santander has said the Gelman Collection will be returned to Mexico by 2028, a reversal that follows mounting criticism over the works’ transfer to Spain. The collection, assembled by Jacques and Natasha Gelman between 1941 and 1998, includes some of the most closely watched names in 20th-century Mexican art, among them Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, María Izquierdo, José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Gabriel Figueroa, Tina Modotti, and Graciela Iturbide.
The foundation said in January that it would manage 160 of the roughly 300 works beginning in January 2026 under the name Gelman Santander Collection. Eighteen of those works are by Kahlo alone. Several of the artists represented — including Kahlo, Rivera, Siqueiros, and Izquierdo — have been designated Artistic Monuments by the Mexican government, a status that bars permanent export from Mexico while allowing temporary loans for exhibitions.
The announcement comes after an open letter signed by more than 200 art professionals accused the Mexican government of an “institutional blunder” for allowing part of the collection to travel to Spain, where it had been expected to remain in a private museum in Santander. Mexico’s culture secretary, Claudia Curiel, later said in a radio interview that the collection would return in “about two or three years,” while President Claudia Sheinbaum said she had asked Curiel to examine the situation and added, “our wish is for it to remain in Mexico.”
The collection’s ownership history has been unusually tangled. After Natasha Gelman’s death in 1998, Robert R. Littman, who had served as her adviser, said the will named him executor and directed that the collection remain in Mexico. In the years that followed, the works were the subject of claims from alleged heirs. A 2024 report by El País said the collection’s whereabouts were unknown between 2008 and 2024, until 30 works appeared in a Sotheby’s auction catalog consigned by the Vergel Foundation, which Littman had founded to manage the collection. The auction was later halted by the Mexican state.
Fundación Banco Santander has said the works now belong to the Zambrano family and that the collection’s management and exhibition in Spain were being carried out on their behalf. INBAL, meanwhile, has said it has not issued a temporary export permit for the Gelman Santander Collection to go to Spain. Several works are currently on view at Mexico City’s Museo de Arte Moderno, where the exhibition has been extended through July.
The case underscores how quickly private ownership, cultural patrimony, and state oversight can collide when major works of national importance move across borders.
