The museum building has two floors and a basement parking lot. The operation and visitor services are located in the lower floor, while the top floor is for permanent exhibitions. The museum presents a panorama of the history of Mexico around a central theme, “Earth”, which shows Mexico’s great diversity of ecosystems and biological richness. The historical exhibition is organized into four periods: Ancient Mexico, Viceroyalty, Nineteenth Century, and Modern Mexico, in each of the themes three main thematic strands are developed: society and daily life; economy and technology; and science, art and culture.

The exhibits were planned with a didactic character, both in discourse as in exhibition design. The museum collections, formed by objects selected for their meaning and historical representations, were supported, in a balanced way, with multiple display media that contextualize themes and periods, and provide different levels of reading and information. The articulation of all these elements make up an exhibition design in which emotional experiences and rational instances, occasions of demonstration and spectacle are alternated, and which provide the opportunity for the active participation of the visitors. The exhibits were designed in continuous spaces without formal divisions, to offer long perspectives and visual references, both to the central theme, and to different sections of the group. From the central space there is access to the beginning of each historical period, where circulation combines moments of visual continuity with moments of expectation and surprise.

The base of the design consists of establishing adequate relationships of hierarchy and scale between objects and display resources, and among these and the exhibition spaces, through display structures that harmonize, with clarity, and with formal and spatial unity, the presentation of many diverse elements disposed in the sequence of the historical discourse.