Carlos Slim Helú’s dream art project

Latin America has just got its probably first ever art museum of true international class. The Museo Soumaya, Mexico City's newest and richest art museum, will house the world’s best and exquisite artworks.

The magnificent museum tends to unfold as an airy white gallery and conveys a real sense of grandeur. It is set to house a captivating private collection of close to 66,000 pieces: Riveras and Renoirs, Picassos and Dalís, Da Vincis and Toulouse-Lautrecs, ravishing religious relics plus a treasure of rare coins courtesy the viceroys of Spain.

Encased in alluring aluminum, the Soumaya rises up 150 ft, before it smoothly canopies just like a slightly oversize mushroom - thought up by Magritte. The sizzling structure has cost roughly $70 million. Carlos Slim Helú, the world's richest man (He is ranked No. 1 in Forbes magazine's 2011 list of the richest billionaires.) The owner of the Soumaya bounty is a fond collector of art. He has showcased some of it for years in a obscure venue in the south of the capital. A new museum writ large in honor of Soumaya Domit, his late wife, will soon house it.

Slim's eye over the thriving contemporary and classic art marketplace is keen to pick spot lucrative deals. In the early 1980s, when Rodins happened to be valued much less than they’re now, he started acquiring them. In later years, as price tags for the sculptures had swelled, and Slim was holding a proud collection of over 100 pieces, many of them prized ones, such as ‘Eve’, 'The Kiss', 'The Thinker', and 'The Shades'.

Slim states the wholesale acquisition was never about the money. Yet a section of critics in Mexico term him more of a savvy bargain hunter than a sheer aesthete. According to some of them, Slim doesn't worry about quality, and simply buys what’s available cheap. Keeping the criticism aside, the fact remains that Slim's art collection has improved over time. The billionaire himself discounts such criticism. Almost all of the works are bough individually from Sotheby's and Christie's.