The trajectory of Mexican visual-art developments continues at the National Art Museum in the

Ricardo Pinto, "Deliva-Nature," 2006, mixed media on canvas, at Santiago Toca Art.

Centro Histórico, next to the elegant Central Post Office. Collections on view at the renovated museum, with its state-of-the-art galleries and intimate viewing rooms for drawings and prints, cover the period from the Spanish-colonial era to the mid-20th century. For works created after that time and for Mexican modernism in depth, head back to the Museum of Modern Art in Chapultepec Park.

To the west of the Centro, the side-by-side Roma and Condesa districts are filled with Art Deco, Art Nouveau and early modernist architectural gems. Many contemporary-art galleries are located there, including Garash Galería, Nina Menocal and OMR (which, over the years, has showcased conceptual art and also new art from Cuba.). Nearby, Casa Lamm, a cultural center in a renovated old mansion, offers exhibition spaces, a bookstore and a glass-enclosed restaurant set down like a giant cube in one corner of a lush, enclosed garden.

Around the corner, dealer Gerardo Traeger of Traeger & Pinto offers a wide range of art forms, from drawings and contemporary photographs to motorized, kinetic sculpture. “We’re eclectic and try to keep our exhibition schedule open and flexible to accommodate unexpected finds,” Traeger says as he examines abstract paintings on canvas mounted on board by Ernesto Jay Goebel. Even within this Mexican artist’s body of work, three different stylistic strains are visible, and that’s just the way this dealer likes it.

A block from Casa Lamm, private dealer Santiago Toca welcomes collectors to his viewing space, located in a white birthday cake of a building on a palm-filled plaza. Toca observes, “Although there has been a trend here toward conceptual art in recent years, I’m interested in artists—especially painters—whose work is rooted in modernism, abstraction and figuration.” Toca represents the Oaxaca-based painter Ricardo Pinto and, from Spain’s Catalonia region, Jordi Boldó. Both are abstractionists known for creating works with texture-rich surfaces. Also in the neighborhood, Galería El Estudio offers affordable works by emerging artists, as well as prints and drawings by the 89-year-old, British-born Leonora Carrington, a legendary figure of the Mexican Surrealism movement.

Many of these dealers take part in México Arte Contemporáneo (MACO), an international fair that takes place in Mexico City during the last week of April. This year, the fifth annual MACO will feature dealers from Mexico, the U.S. and Europe. The fair offers a unique opportunity to examine the work of emerging and already established Mexican and Latin-American artists in a broader, international context. The fair and the numerous events related to it have become a locus for the talents and energies of Mexico City’s overlapping worlds of art, publishing, fashion and media. If anyone has any doubt that the Mexican capital’s moment has arrived on the global contemporary-art scene, MACO emphatically dispels it. Its message to art-minded travelers and collectors alike is clear: ¡Viva México!

Art critic Edward M. Gomez, an Art & Antiques New York correspondent, resides part-time in Mexico City.