The political changes caused the museum to pass, depending on the Secretary of Public Instruction, to that of Agriculture and Development, to later be admitted to the heritage of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), through the Institute of Biology in 1929. During those early years, emblematic pieces were donated to the museum, such as the replica in the plaster of the Diplodocus Carnegie, that would define, next to the 27 -meter length whale, its image.
Galleries, auditorium, film room, cafeteria and other new spaces were part of the program proposed by Ten Architects for the complete remodeling of the Chopo Museum in 2005.Agustín Garza / Ten Architects
From science to culture
In 1964, the new Natural History Museum was inaugurated in the Chapultepec Forest and most of the pieces that were previously in the Chopo were transferred to this enclosure, designed by Leonides Guadarrama. The chopo remained abandoned until 1972. The following year by UNAM, a process of renewal of the building given the state of deterioration that had experienced in the previous decades for the lack of maintenance began. On November 25, 1975, Rector Soberón and the Cultural Diffusion Coordinator inaugurated the University Museum of the Chopoa space that would work as a promoter and diffuser of the art of its time and university culture.
Exhibitions of astronomy, art, performance, cinema, theater and music were a ban also accommodate the genres born of subcultures, such as punk and gothic that took place, also, in the already legendary tianguis of the chopo.
Francisco Toledo, Carlos Fuentes, Carlos Monsivis or Cristina Pacheco They have been some of the cultural agents who found in Chopo a space to talk about their work and the cultural context in which it was framed while the institution It has been directed by prominent characters such as Ángeles Mastretta, Arnold Belkin, Lourdes Monges or José Luis Paredes Pacho.