Museo Casa Kahlo Opens; Family Shapes Kahlo Legacy

New exhibitions and the family-run Museo Casa Kahlo in Mexico City are reframing Frida Kahlo’s life by foregrounding intimate objects and archives: “Frida Kahlo: Picturing an Icon” presents personal photos, journals and home movies that trace how pain, pregnancy loss and questions of gender informed her work, while Museo Casa Kahlo (the red house) opens family rooms and a cellar workshop filled with curios, letters and previously unseen material. Kahlo’s descendants say the museum aims to present her beyond the shadow of Diego Rivera and to protect and shape the family’s version of her legacy, including trademark and publication efforts. Curators highlight the cellar as a sacred creative refuge that sheds light on private sources of her imagery. At the same time, Kahlo’s market power continues to rise: Sotheby’s will exhibit and then auction El sueño (La cama) in November with a $40–$60 million estimate on a global tour that includes New York. Her elevation from a mid-20th-century artist to a global icon has been propelled by feminist reappraisal and escalating auction records, making her image widely reproduced and commercially prominent.