A national library is shuttered

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When Mexico’s new national library, the $97 million Biblioteca Vasconcelos, opened 10 months ago, some critics already were writing its obituary. The massive edifice in the middle of Mexico City is the largest single cultural project undertaken during Vicente Fox’s six-year presidency. But it’s been derided as a wasteful vanity by legislators and others who think Mexico should be spending the money instead to beef up its regional library branches across the country, and investing in digital archives rather than dead-tree volumes.

Now it looks as if the nay-sayers may have had a point. The hulking five-story library, which was still under construction when it opened last June, has been closed to the public ‘indefinitely’ while emergency repairs are made and unfinished jobs (such as the large botanical garden) are completed. Architects and engineers have declared the building to have numerous flaws, including cracked staircases and fancy bathroom fixtures that don’t work. Another hue and cry erupted recently when it was revealed that the library had been used for a commercial fashion shoot. Images of young, pouting models slinking around the desolate book shelves didn’t go over too well.

Posted by Reed Johnson in Mexico City