On a recent Thursday night, the unfinished Mexican Museum at the base of a housing complex in Yerba Buena Gardens hosted a museum walkthrough and reception to woo donors and raise the $27 million needed to finish renovations.
It’s unlikely that this event alone met that goal, but Andrew Kluger, the board chairman, opted for optimism. “No one thought we’d get this done, but it really is done,” Kluger said, pointing out that, even as the four floors of the museum are unfinished, initial renovations are complete.
One of the largest donors, Nur Al Hausawi, who uses the professional alias Robin Lee Allen, was on hand with an entourage and friends, some of whom thought they were there for her birthday party — though there was no cake. One even said that he didn’t realize it was a fundraiser for the museum until he arrived.
Allen is a managing member of the Saudi-American Family Office, an organization that manages the wealth of a Saudi family, according to her business card. Her own family’s fund donated $500,000, which makes her one of the Mexican Museum’s top donors. That sum was only topped by the donation of Mauricio Sulaimán Saldivar, a Mexican businessman and the president of the World Boxing Council, who recently donated $5 million.
If the Mexican Museum wants to reopen, donations like Allen’s and Saldivar’s will need to continue.
The museum closed its Fort Mason gallery in 2018 after falling behind on rent, but its plans to reopen at 706 Mission St. have long been delayed by continuing financial troubles.
A city audit in March 2024 found that, as of December of 2022, the museum had only raised 2 percent of the $49 million it needs for the renovations. After the audit, the museum brought on Mission Neighborhood Centers as its fiscal sponsor, and has since completed the initial renovations, but the interior remains to be finished.
The museum aims to reopen the first floor and lobby in 2025, which will feature pop-up exhibits. The remaining three floors will open in phases.
Ever since a small museum opened in 1975 in the Mission, thanks to Chicano artist Peter Rodriguez, the reason for its existence has been the same. “We didn’t see ourselves on the walls in the art that was being shown,” said museum board member Alfredo Pedroza. “This is going to be a museum that’s going to tell the intersectional stories of everything that has come through Latino America.”
Thursday’s event invited potential supporters from throughout the Bay Area to walk through the unfinished space that will one day house a collection of more than 16,500 Mexican, Mexican-American, Latin American and Chicanx artifacts.
What potential donors saw was more a construction site than a museum: Dust covered the concrete floors, the ceilings revealed wires and pipes, and, in places, the walls weren’t yet complete. Fluffy pink insulation was the only color.
Still, the guides did their best to give participants an idea of what the space would become, indicating where galleries and programming spaces would be located, and directing them to mockups of what the venue would look like at some future date. And, on each floor, there was a poster displaying opportunities for businesses and private donors to name spaces; $2 million would buy a donor naming rights to the lobby; $250,000 was enough for naming rights to an educational classroom.
After the quick tour, guests moved to a reception on the balcony of the Four Seasons Private Residence, the apartment building above the museum. Over hors d’oeuvres and amid live arpa jarocha music, around 150 guests mingled, talking cheerfully. Many approached Allen to wish her a happy birthday.
The event concluded with a presentation, in which a video mockup of the museum was shown and several people gave short speeches, including Marta Turok, a Mexican anthropologist who specializes in folk art, and Bobbi López from Mayor London Breed’s office.
López said the mayor wanted “to make sure that the fundraising goes well.”
The crowd seemed receptive to that goal. Most people said they were considering a donation, and scanned the museum’s Venmo QR code or picked up envelopes for checks or pledges. This included many of Allen’s friends; Allen even took to carrying around an envelope to hand out to those who asked.
“It seems like they are already doing a lot of great work, and cultivating just so many wonderful pieces,” said Cri Campbell Schine, one of the attendees, adding that she and her husband plan to make a donation.
Allen’s donation was motivated by California’s history as once part of Mexico. “It is my personal belief, and the belief of the Saudi American Family Office, that Alta California, also known as the State of California, is Mexico,” she said.
She is considering asking the Saudi government to also donate to the Mexican Museum, something they may be receptive to, since they have funded other American museums in the past. As for whether Allen will continue to contribute, there’s no doubt: “We will make follow up donations,” she said.
Abigail Van Neely contributed reporting.
So why isn’t the Mexican Museum anywhere the Mission?
A long time ago I discovered “Mexican” art on and within Balmy Alley.
Back before it was a thing.
Blew my mind, as they say.
Thereafter art started appearing on walls all over the place!
All the best wishes and hopes for the museum but ….
Maybe the a lot of the art and artists are just to big and grandiose and awesome to be confined to a museum wall.
You know – including that guy.
Vinci frescoed Jesus but this guy did a Lenin and refused to remove it when Rockefellered!
On the flip side, obviously I’m missing something on the smaller scale.
Overwhelmed by the big wave in The Mission.