The Fundación Banco Santander in Spain has announced that it will return the Gelman Collection, which includes several important works of 20th-century Mexican art, to Mexico by 2028, according to a report by dpa.
The planned return comes after an open letter signed by more than 200 art professionals last month that accused the Mexican government of an “institutional blunder” by allowing part of the Gelman Collection to travel to Spain, where they were meant to be house permanently in a private museum in Santander, in the north of Spain.
In January, the foundation for the Madrid-based bank announced that it would manage 160 of the approximately 300 works that had been amassed by Jacques and Natasha Gelman, who had amassed their fortune in Mexico’s film industry, between 1941 and 1998, the year of Natasha’s death. (Jacques died in 1986.)
Among the works that Fundación Banco Santander said it would now steward “from January 2026 onwards.” In the newly renamed Gelman Santander Collection are major pieces by some of Mexico’s most important artists, including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, María Izquierdo, José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Gabriel Figueroa, Tina Modotti, and Graciela Iturbide. Of those 160 works, 18 of them are by Kahlo alone.
Several of these artists, including Kahlo, Rivera, Siqueiros, and Izquierdo, have been designated as Artistic Monuments by the Mexican government, meaning that their art cannot be permanently exported from Mexico but can be loaned for exhibitions for a set amount of time. (Only works already outside Mexico are able to be sold on the international art market, irrespective of the buyer’s location.)
After Natasha’s death, Robert R. Littman, a curator who had been serving as her adviser, said that the will had named him executor of the estate and that he collection was to stay in Mexico. In the years since, the collection has been subject to numerous claims from alleged heirs, including distant cousins and half-siblings, according to a 2024 report by El País.
The part of the collection that was to head to Spain is now owned by the Zambrano family, one of the country’s richest families, according to the Fundación Banco Santander, which has said that the collection’s management and exhibition in Spain was being done on behalf of the Zambranos. Until recently, it had been unclear if the collection would be in Spain for a temporary exhibition or more permanently.
The open letter from last month said that while “the change of ownership is a matter that strictly concerns private individuals; however, the fate of the work protected by these decrees – and for which the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature is called upon to take measures to ensure its conservation and custody – concerns us all.”
Two weeks after the letter first began circulating, Claudia Curiel, Mexico’s culture secretary, said in a radio interview that the collection would return to Mexico “in about two or three years,” according to El País. That same week, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said in a press conference that she had asked Curiel to look into the situation, adding that “our wish is for it to remain in Mexico.”
The 2024 El País report also said that the whereabouts of the Gelman Collection were unknown between 2008 and 2024, when 30 of them were featured in a Sotheby’s auction catalog. They were being consigned by the Vergel Foundation, which had been founded by Littman as a way to manage the collection. That auction was ultimately halted by the Mexican State.
According to El País, the Instituto de Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBAL) said it has not issued a temporary export permit for the Gelman Santander Collection to head to Spain. Additionally, several of the works are currently on view at Mexico City’s Museo de Arte Moderno, with that exhibition being extended to July, so that it is still on view during the 2026 World Cup this summer.
