Diego Rivera Stadium Relief to Be Restored in Mexico City
A monumental stone relief by Diego Rivera on the side of a university stadium in Mexico City will be restored.
The work, The University, the Family and Sport in Mexico, dates to 1952-54 and sits on the east wall of the Estadio Olímpico Universitario at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. The plan was reported by The Art Newspaper.
The project opens a multiyear programme between the World Monuments Fund in New York and UNAM to preserve major murals across its central campus. Local experts will carry out the Rivera restoration. Later work will include two other large campus pieces.
Support for the Rivera phase comes from the US Embassy in Mexico City. The funding runs through the US Department of State's Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation Freedom 250 initiative.
Rivera called the stadium piece an "escultopintura", a mix of sculpture and painting made in carved stone. It depicts a Mexican eagle and an Andean condor guarding three figures linked to mestizaje, the mixed Indigenous and European heritage much discussed in Mexico after the revolution, according to UNAM Global. It was never finished.
The artist had planned a far larger mural about sport to wrap the stadium, which was completed in 1952. What survives is only the high relief, carving that projects from its background, on the east wall. A contract in Rivera's archive names 2 June as the start date and put the total cost at 300,000 pesos, according to Gaceta UNAM.
The stadium still hosts UNAM's representative teams and remains one of Mexico's most important sports venues. The wider collaboration will also cover David Alfaro Siqueiros's three-dimensional mural on the rectory tower and Juan O'Gorman's stone mosaic mural at the main library. UNAM's central campus was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in Paris in 2007.
What makes this stand out is the setting. For fans, this means match days and art visits happen in the same place, with conservation work unfolding where athletes still compete.
