Trust Overseeing Rivera and Kahlo Estates Accused of Mismanagement

A former director of museums devoted to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Mexico City has accused the trust that oversees those two institutions of years of mismanagement.

In a statement to the Art Newspaper, which first reported news of Soto’s claims, the trust said the former director never officially reported concerns about the status of the collections during her tenure.

Hilda Trujillo Soto, who led the two museums between 2009 and 2020, made her allegations public in an extensive blog post published in early April. She alleged that the trustees failed to properly address a discrepancy in their records centering around Kahlo and Rivera works that may have gone missing. Soto claimed that these works later appeared, without explanation, in private collections in the United States.

The museums’ collections operate with a protected status under Mexican national heritage law and are governed by a trust that was established in 1955 by Rivera, Kahlo’s husband. That trust is now administered by Mexico’s central bank, Banxico.

Soto claims that Mexican officials have not responded to several written and in-person requests she’s made since 2020 for audits of financial and historical records related to the museums’ collections.

She further alleged that materials related to Kahlo’s personal diary have been misplaced, as have artworks catalogued as part of an inventory list from 1957, including paintings titled Frida in Flames and The Abortion. Soto speculated that these works were sold privately and illegally.

She asserted that Mexico’s central bank had violated legal standards around how Rivera’s estate is governed. “Sixty-nine years after Diego Rivera’s donation to the ‘People of Mexico,’ Banxico has failed to fulfill the mandate it accepted to safeguard the museum collections that house part of the national heritage, which is crucial to understanding the history, identity, and memory of our country,” she wrote.

Banxico officials could not be immediately reached for comment on Trujillo’s claims.

The trust is currently preparing a major traveling exhibition on Kahlo alongside the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Tate Modern. It’s unclear whether Soto’s claims will impact that exhibition.