The Los Angeles Times covers the controversy over Mexico City’s new Modern art museum. Some critics hate the architecture but the public has made up it’s own mind:

But the modernity of MUAC’s design is at the heart of criticisms directed at the project. Writing in the investigative-journalism magazine Proceso, Blanca González Rosas claims that González de León’s design bears too-striking a resemblance to Japan’s 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in  Kanazawa. She states that it is an “unfortunate influence that demonstrates the creative exhaustion of González de León,” and suggests rescinding the rather sizable government grant he received for the project.

González Rosas also says the MUAC is out of architectural context with its location, where it sits among buildings, including the Nezahualcoyotl concert hall, built in the 1970s. Architect and author Manuel Larrosa, also writing in Proceso, calls the museum a work of self-homage by González de León that dominates its space in an abusive matter.

Tough criticism indeed, but the Mexican public can’t seem to stay away. In its first two weeks, the museum received more than 30,000 visitors, and the smallest number of daily visitors to MUAC during that period was 1,400.

An Introduction to MUAC, Mexico’s Modern Art Museum (LA Plaza/Los Angeles Times)