The Museo de la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público is an art museum located in the historic center of 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...

. It is housed in what was the Palacio del Arzobispado (Palace of the Archbishopric), built in 1530 under Friar Juan de Zumárraga on the base of the destroyed pyramid dedicated to the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca

Tezcatlipoca

Tezcatlipoca was a central deity in Aztec religion. One of the four sons of Ometeotl, he is associated with a wide range of concepts, including the night sky, the night winds, hurricanes, the north, the earth, obsidian, enmity, discord, rulership, divination, temptation, jaguars, sorcery, beauty,...

. It remained the archbishphoric until 1867 when the Finance Ministry Accountancy Department was established there. The modern museum houses an exhibit dedicated to this god as well as a large art collection.

History

The building was the colonial archbishop's palace and contains two stone-columned courtyards. In 1530, Friar Juan de Zumárraga became the first archbishop

Archbishop

An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...

 of New Spain

New Spain

New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...

, which at that time included most of the Americas and the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

. He decided to place the see

Episcopal See

An episcopal see is, in the original sense, the official seat of a bishop. This seat, which is also referred to as the bishop's cathedra, is placed in the bishop's principal church, which is therefore called the bishop's cathedral...

 in two houses near where the cathedral

Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral

The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary of Mexico City is the largest and oldest cathedral in the Americas and seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico. It is situated atop the former Aztec sacred precinct near the Templo Mayor on the northern side of the Plaza de la...

 would later be built. After initial adaptation, two structures were added: one to cast bells and the other served as a prison. The structure continued to be modified until 1771 when it attained the appearance still seen today. The complex is topped by a cornice

Cornice

Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.The function of the projecting...

 on with inverted arches are combined with merlon

Merlon

In architecture, a merlon forms the solid part of an embattled parapet, sometimes pierced by embrasures. The space between two merlons is usually called a crenel, although those later designed and used for cannons were called embrasures.-Etymology:...

s. Two estipite

Estipite

The estipite column is a type of column or pilaster typical of the Churrigueresque baroque style of Spain and Spanish America used in the 18th century. It has the shape of an inverted cone or obelisk....

 columns flank the bay of the portal, through which the highest ecclesiastical authorities of colonial times once passed. Remnants of the pyramid of Tezcatlipoca can be seen on the ground floor. This is because of a restoration project concluded in 1997. Along with restoring the colonial building, two excavations were carried out to expose details of the pre-Hispanic structures.

Imprisoned here was one of the first conspriators for Mexican Independence

Mexican War of Independence

The Mexican War of Independence was an armed conflict between the people of Mexico and the Spanish colonial authorities which started on 16 September 1810. The movement, which became known as the Mexican War of Independence, was led by Mexican-born Spaniards, Mestizos and Amerindians who sought...

, Francisco Primo de Verdad y Ramos, who died here in 1808.

Museum

The modern museum houses a collection of art from the 18th to 20th centuries, including works by Juan Correa

Juan Correa

Juan Correa was a Mexican painter of mixed Moorish or African, Indian and Spanish heritage. His years of greatest activity were from 1671 to 1716. He painted many religious-themed, Baroque paintings for cathedrals in Mexico. Correa was José de Ibarra's teacher...

, Diego Garcia

Diego Garcia

Diego Garcia is a tropical, footprint-shaped coral atoll located south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean at 7 degrees, 26 minutes south latitude. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory [BIOT] and is positioned at 72°23' east longitude....

, 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....

, Antonio Ruiz , Adolfo Best Maugard

Adolfo Best Maugard

Adolfo Best Maugard also known as Fito Best was a Mexican painter, film director and screenwriter.- Life :...

 and Raúl Anguiano

Raúl Anguiano

José Raúl Anguiano Valadez was a Mexican critical realist painter, draftsman, muralist, and engraver, as well as a member of the second generation of the so-called "Mexican School of Painting" in Mexican art, along with Juan O'Gorman, Judith Gutierrez, Jorge González Camarena, José Chávez Morado,...

. The central and permanent exhibit is called the "Pago en Especie y Acervo Patrimonial" (payment in kind and cultural heritage). It features works done by Mexicans and foreigners living in Mexico, many of whom donated the works here in lieu of paying their taxes , as part of a program initiated in 1957 as part of an initiative to stimulate artistic activity in Mexico for Mexico. The program's foremost promoter was artist David Alfaro Siqueiros

David Alfaro Siqueiros

José David Alfaro Siqueiros was a social realist painter, known for his large murals in fresco that helped establish the Mexican Mural Renaissance, together with works by Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, and also a member of the Mexican Communist Party who participated in an...

.

However, the idea did not really take off until the 1970s when Jaime Saldívar, Inés Amor, Gilberto Aceves Navarro

Gilberto Aceves Navarro

Gilberto Horacio Aceves Navarro is a Mexican painter.- Biography :Aceves studied painting at "La Esmeralda" under Enrique Assad, Ignacio Aguirre and Carlos Orozco Romero after 1950...

 repromoted Siquieros' idea, gaining backing from president Luis Echeverría Álvarez in 1975. The revived project has enjoyed enthusiastic support from contemporary artists such as Luis López Loza, Roberto Doniz, Luis Nishizawa

Luis Nishizawa

Luis Nishizawa Flores is a Mexican artist. His father, Kenji Nishizawa is Japanese with origins from Nagano prefecture and his mother, María de Jesús Flores is Mexican....

, Ángela Gurría

Ángela Gurría

Ángela Gurría Davó is a Mexican sculptor. In 1973, she became the first female member of the Academia de Artes.- Biography :...

, Roger von Gunten, Francisco Corzas

Francisco Corzas

Francisco Corzas Chávez was a Mexican painter and printmaker who extablished himself as a leading Expressionist artist in the 1960s and '70s....

, Feliciano Béjar

Feliciano Béjar

Feliciano Béjar Ruiz was a self-taught Mexican painter and sculptor. He was born in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, Mexico and died in Mexico City on February 1 2007....

, Francisco Capdevilla, Fernando Castro Pacheco

Fernando Castro Pacheco

Fernando Castro Pacheco is a Mexican painter, engraver, illustrator, print maker and teacher. As well as being known for traditional artistic forms, Castro Pacheco illustrated several children’s books and produced works in sculpture. He is more popularly known for his murals that invoke the spirit...

, Arnaldo Coen, José Luis Cuevas

Jose Luis Cuevas

José Luis Cuevas is a modernist painter and sculptor from Mexico. Born in 1934, Cuevas derived most of his training outside of the academies. He is considered to be one of the artists from the 1950s in the Rupture Generation that was departing from the politicized and stylized mural school of...

, José Chávez Morado

José Chávez Morado

José Chávez Morado was a Mexican painter and sculptor.- Biography :Morado was born in Silao, near the city of Guanajuato, where Diego Rivera was born, and like Rivera he is a well known and highly regarded painter and sculptor who became most famous for the murals he painted in Mexico in the first...

 and Arnold Belkin

Arnold Belkin

Arnold Belkin was a Mexican painter and mural artist. Born in Canada, he moved to Mexico to be closer to the Mexican artists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Siquerios. In the '50s he befriended the latter, collaborating with him on two murals in Mexico City...

, among others, many of whom still make donations to the museum's collection. Because of this, the museum has been able to assemble exhibits of works by individuals such as Rodolfo Morales

Rodolfo Morales

Rodolfo Morales was a Mexican painter, who incorporated elements of magic realism into his work.Morales is best known for his brightly coloured surrealistic dream-like canvases and collages often featuring Mexican women in village settings...

, Rafael Coronel

Rafael Coronel

Rafael Coronel is a painter from Mexico. He was the son-in-law of Diego Rivera. His representational paintings have a melancholic sobriety, and include faces from the past great masters, often floating in a diffuse haze.There are some paintings of his own in Mexico and in other countries...

, Manuel Felguérez

Manuel Felguérez

Manuel Felguérez Aspe is a Mexican abstract artist.-Biography:Felguérez was born at the Hacienda de San Agustin del Vergel, in the town of Valparaíso, Zacatecas. At the time, in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, there were still uprisings by small guerrillas and land ownership was nothing less...

 and Vicente Rojo

Vicente Rojo

Vicente Rojo may refer to:*Vicente Rojo Almazán, Spanish-Mexican artist laureated with the National Prize in Arts and Sciences*Vicente Rojo Lluch, Republican army officer during the Spanish Civil War...

. The museum also hosts temporary exhibits, mostly of contemporary art.