A new Frida Kahlo museum focused on her family life, opens in Mexico City

The long-held secrets of the Kahlo family, including those of legendary artist Frida, are about to be unlocked for the world with the opening of the Casa Kahlo Museum this weekend.

- 

Although located very close to the iconic Casa Azulin Coyoacán's historic centre, the Casa Kahlo Museum is a different place with an intertwined history. This house belonged to Frida Kahlo's parents, who bought it after giving her the Casa Azul — where she grew up and lived with Diego Rivera — as a wedding gift. While the Kahlo House features elements familiar to Frida Kahlo fans — like a traditional kitchen and garden — its true value is the new perspective it provides on her life. It reveals intimate details about her close-knit family, including her photographer father, Guillermo, and her sister and caregiver, Cristina.

“You can find a more humane approach to her story, to her origins,” said museum director Adán Garcia, adding that visitors will see that behind the great artist was a child who “struggled with polio and who was fond of her father and her mother.” Frida herself lived in the house for a time, and it was inhabited by her relatives until just two years ago.

The Associated Press took an exclusive tour of this new museum that includes the only murals painted by Kahlo on record. As a child, Frida Kahlo loved to collect insects and use a microscope to see their wings. That microscope is in the basement of the Kahlo House, a very special place for the painter. It was there where, already married to Diego Rivera, she used to find a space for herself. “When she fought with Diego, she would come here to the basement for refuge,” said Frida Kahlo's great-niece, Mara Romeo Kahlo. “It was like her place of peace; this was her home.”