His buying habits, says Mari Carmen, Latin curator at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, have made him "a huge force on the art scene." He's been known to acquire as many as a dozen top-quality pieces a month. Instead, he pops up at fundraising dinners, art fairs and exhibitions. Young Lopez, a Pan-American playboy in the classic mold, spends little time behind a desk (he's titular head of marketing for Jumex). The company is run by his father, who owns 70% and takes a passing interest in his son's esthetic passions. At the factory they are then waved past two armed checkpoints. Visitors first must trek to the gritty industrial pueblo of Ecatepec, a half hour's drive north of Mexico City, on the way to the pyramids of Teotihuacán. Lopez's two-story gallery is surrounded by pulping and pasteurization vats. La Colección is housed inside the juice factory itself. At 1,300 pieces La Colección is both the largest private art collection of any kind in Latin America and the largest collection of Latin American art in the world. To build this mecca of modernism, known as La Colección Jumex, Lopez has blown $80 million of the family fortune. The pairing delivers an "irresistible luster to an unknown artist," says Alma Ruiz, head of the Latin department at Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art (Moca). Such deliberate juxtaposition makes Mexican pieces look like the equal of their more famous northern cousins. Here they see Mexican conceptual artist Inaki Bonillas' wall of buzzing neon, situated a few steps away from a Jeff Koons work (three basketballs floating in a fish aquarium). Lopez has also been luring the art world's elite to Mexico, inviting 25 curators a year to visit his collection, housed in a 40,000-square-foot building. and European exhibitions, publish catalogs and fund Latin arts courses at north-of-the-border colleges and art schools. To gain acceptance for his young protégés, some of whom dabble in video installations and high-technology sculpture, Lopez has spent, through his arts foundation, $12 million over the past four years to underwrite Latin-focused museum programs in the U.S., lend art to U.S. "Why shouldn't contemporary art from Latin America get the same respect as contemporary works from Europe or the U.S.?" "It's time to break that mold," he says with a wave of his hand. Latin art is still viewed through the lens of stodgy, pre-World War II muralism. He now wants North Americans to share his passion. In funding an estimated one-third of the contemporary art exhibitions in Mexico City, Lopez has lifted the careers (and plumped the pocketbooks) of dozens of artists. Since 2001 the boyish supercollector has been the largest patron in Mexico's modern art scene. Not as big a boost, however, as the evening's host (and the spider's owner), 36-year-old Eugenio López Alonso, scion of the Mexican family that owns Jumex, one of the biggest juice producers in the world. "Guys like Cheech are giving the whole Latin art market a lift," he says, gazing at a 5-foot bronze tarantula mounted on a nearby wall. Marin is one of the biggest collectors of Chicano art in the U.S., explains Garza to fellow guests as he knocks back a shot of tequila. Garza is recounting his recent visit with Cheech Marin of comedy duo Cheech & Chong. In October, during a late-night dinner at a penthouse apartment overlooking Mexico City's Chapultepec Park, U.S. Now he wants gringos to share his passion. Eugenio Lopez made himself a patron of Latin American art.
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