MEXICO CITY JOURNAL

          By JOSEPH B. TREASTER

          MEXICO CITY -- Thirty-five years ago, the National Museum of
          Anthropology here was on the cutting edge of museum design
          and acclaimed as a treasure trove of pre-Columbian art and cultural
          artifacts.

          But the museum has remained almost precisely as it was on opening day
          in 1964. It has become a sort of museum of a museum, with dark
          paneled walls and dim, shadowy lighting that were once believed to
          enhance a sense of dignity and seriousness, and boxy,
          home-aquarium-style display cases that let the art speak for itself.

          The stodginess and fading glory of the museum began to bother Mexican
          authorities. And now, despite years of economic turmoil, the
          administration of President Ernesto Zedillo has embarked on a sweeping
          renovation.

          The project is going to cost about $13 million and is supposed to be
          completed in December 2000 as Zedillo turns over power to a new
          President.

          Everyone agrees that the updating is overdue. But with such basics as
          running water and electricity unavailable to many Mexicans, not everyone
          thinks that so much money should be sunk into a museum, even one that
          is internationally acclaimed and that helps pay for itself by contributing to
          the country's important tourist business.

          Gilberto López y Rivas, a first-term congressman in the center-left Party
          of the Democratic Revolution and an anthropologist by training,
          practically stammers when he talks about the project.

          Unquestionably, he said, the museum, where he once worked, is a great
          showcase of Mexico's past. But he said it was "an insult that you can
          spend that kind of money while so many of the country's Indians are
          living in absolute poverty, with dirt floors and no water."

          Still, there seems to be far more applause than criticism of the
          make-over.

          "My guess is that if we have to look at this as a trade-off, where do you
          spend your money?" said Federico Estévez, a political science professor
          in Mexico City. "In the end, a lot of people will prefer to spend it on the
          museum. Maybe you need to pave roads or build something in a small
          town somewhere.

          But the museum is something that can be seen and enjoyed by everyone.
          It's a big, gorgeous place with all this history."

          Raquel Tibol, an author and art critic for the weekly Proceso magazine,
          said the right thing was being done for the wrong reason.

          "Every President," she said, "increases the number of projects like this at
          the end of his term. They all spend their last year in office dedicating
          hospitals, factories, bridges, museums, whatever."

          Ms. Tibol said the museum was built "too fast" so that the outgoing
          President at the time, Adolfo López Mateos, could dedicate it. A result
          was too little administrative space, she said, and inadequate climate
          control in storage areas.

          No one, she said, should be put off by the cost. "Look at the cost of
          corruption, or the cost of these political campaigns that are going on right
          now," she said. "That is what is really outrageous in this country."

          Carpenters and painters are to finish the first six galleries by late
          September and three more by the end of the year, leaving 14 display
          areas to be completed next year. Some skeptics question whether
          meeting the December 2000 deadline is possible. And they worry that if
          there are delays and cost overruns, a new administration may have other
          priorities.

          The new design for the museum transforms it from a passive, sometimes
          somber viewing experience to one with exhibits that will draw visitors
          along paths through sections of villages and burial grounds, combining
          displays of centuries-old pottery and stone sculpture in reproductions of
          the kinds of homes and temples in which they were used.

          Touch-screen computers are being sprinkled in alcoves so as not to
          distract from the antiquities but to provide instant historical details.
          Bell-shaped acoustical devices will be suspended above some of the
          paths so people can pause under them and listen to long-ago regional
          music and voices speaking in early forms of some of the country's more
          than 50 indigenous dialects. A huge panel covered with a drawing of the
          Tlatelolco marketplace, where Hernán Cortez, the Spaniard who
          defeated the Aztecs, reported seeing daily crowds of up to 30,000
          people, is being turned into a video screen where three projectors will
          play constantly changing images.

          Relenting to longtime criticism, museum officials are going to provide
          legends identifying objects not only in Spanish but in English as well.

          Besides all the technological wonders, the museum is literally changing the
          face of some of its proudest exhibits based on new information from a
          surge of more than 200 archeological digs in Mexico in the last five years.

          For example, several revisions are being made to the big sand-table
          model of the ceremonial center of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, where
          Mexico City now stands.

          "In 1965, people invented a serpent wall around the whole thing," said
          Felipe Solís Olguín, a deputy director of the museum. "That didn't exist.
          In reality, there was a large platform wall with many staircases to ground
          level. Some temples and the ball court were in the wrong position. And
          five or six buildings had been left out. The archeologists found evidence
          of how it really looked."

          Memories of the Christmas Day theft here in 1985, in which more than
          100 priceless gold, jade and stone artifacts were taken, still pain museum
          officials. Nearly all of the pieces were later recovered from a home in
          Mexico City and two men were arrested.

          At the time, the Government said museum guards had apparently been
          sleeping off the effects of a Christmas Eve party. But Teresa Franco, the
          director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, which runs
          the museum, said that it was not really a matter of anyone having had too
          much to drink.

          "The main fault," she said, "was our security system." Now, she said,
          there are about 85 guards, nearly triple the size of the security force in
          1985. Since the theft, the museum has also fitted alarms to display cases
          and installed video cameras and a central monitoring room.