Yet Another Mexico City Museum

Mexico City is supposed to have at least 150 museums.  Many of them are small and deal with very specialized topics.  On Tuesday I went to one which I noticed many times but which I had never visited... "El Museo Nacional de la Estampa" (The National Illustration Museum).  Here on display are prints which were used in books, newspapers, magazines and other forms of media.  It is certainly nowhere near the top of the list of museums that a first time visitor to Mexico City should see.  In fact, unless you know Spanish and have some background on Mexican history, a visit here is not really recommended.  For me it was a rather interesting museum, a glimpse into the Mexico of an earlier era. 

The museum is located across the street from the Alameda Park on the Plaza of Santa Veracruz, a slightly derelict park anchored on either side by seriously leaning and sinking colonial churches.

One of the artists featured here is José Guadalupe Posada, a famous engraver and editorial cartoonist from the late 19th and early 20th century.  (I mentioned in an earlier post that it was he who published the drawing of the 'catrina", the elegant lady skeleton which has become an icon of Day of the Dead.)

Here are a couple of handbills he printed during the era of the Mexican Revolution...

A poem about a revolutionary saying farewell to his sweetheart

News report of the death of revolutionary Emiliano Zapata

The cover illustration of this 1911 magazine (by a different artist) gives a rather unflattering image of the revolutionary.

In 1957, decades after the Revolution, the front page of the Sunday supplement of the Mexico City newspaper "Excelsior" featured the "Ballad of Pancho Villa".

A 1948 calendar advertising "Sal de Uva Picot", a Mexican antacid remedy.

A map of Chapultepec Park from 1937

A couple examples of sheet music...

"To Die Loving", a waltz

"Juárez Avenue", a foxtrot for piano

I found the school textbooks and children's books to be quite interesting.

A beginning English textbook

A 4th grade reading book entitled "My Toys and I"

I wonder how many school children reading that text actually had that many toys?

This is rather intriguing.  A children's book published by the Secretary of Education entitled "Pérez Mouse Against Mickey Mouse".

The illustration for this humor magazine seems quite risque for the year 1911.

Look at the faces of these proper Mexican ladies who are taking a drawing class.

The caption says that the teacher is telling them,

"Ladies, pay close attention to the dimensions."

Oh my!