Established in 2007 by Moisés Cosío Espinosa, Fundación M (formerly Alumnos 47) is currently located in the Pedregal area, south of Mexico City, and its mission is to support the creation, research, and dissemination of contemporary art in Mexico.
Alumnos 47 originated as a library specialized in Contemporary Art and soon became a curatorial and editorial program that lasted for more than a decade. As part of this project, a mobile library was created that brought the titles of the collection closer to a broader audience, thus disseminating art and literature through various workshops in areas of the metropolitan area where cultural infrastructure is scarce. In parallel, the foundation supported young artists through the acquisition of work and the presentation of experimental exhibitions at its former headquarters in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood, as a way of promoting explorations that do not reduce their production to exclusively commercial criteria. These projects were carried out by the hand of emerging curators and independent spaces, which benefited various agents of the local contemporary art network.
Today, Fundación M remains faithful to its original mission and permanently contributes to research on contemporary culture and education, promoting the career of young artists through the acquisition of works and financial support for educational projects. Thus, the Fundación M collection has become a benchmark for national contemporary art collecting and has been configured as an accurate, broad and reliable overview of recent artistic production in Mexico. Throughout these 15 years, more than 700 pieces elaborated by both Mexican and foreign artists in media such as painting, graphics, drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, collage, digital art, textiles, and video pieces have been brought together. In this way, Cosío’s commitment to the artists of his generation and those to come is made clear by his questioning of the role of a private collection within the art world ecosystem.