A New Museum

I may have been disappointed by the renovation of the upper floor of the Anthropology Museum, but there was no disappointment when Alejandro and I visited Mexico City's newest museum, the Museum of Muralism, last Saturday.

The museum is housed in the former headquarters of the Department of Public Education (known as SEP or "Secretaría de Educación Pública).  

The headquarters were located in the Historic Center just a couple blocks north of the Zócalo.  In an effort to move government offices out Mexico City, several departments have been moved to other cities.  The SEP has been moved to Puebla, and the enormous building has been repurposed to serve as a museum dedicated to the muralist movement.

Muralism is considered to be Mexico's most important contribution to 20th century art.  The muralist movement began in the 1920s after the Mexican Revolution.  The government sought out artists to do paintings on the walls of government buildings, schools and public spaces to establish a national identity, portray the nation's history, and to glorify the revolution.  It could often be viewed as government propaganda, similar to Soviet realism art in the U.S.S.R.  However, out of the movement emerged some of the most important painters of modern art.

The former SEP building is an appropriate place for a museum on muralism since the building is filled with mural paintings by numerous artists, particularly Diego Rivera.  The walls of the three floors of the two courtyards are covered with Rivera murals... more than in the courtyard of the National Palace, perhaps his best known project.  

I visited the building when it was still the SEP headquarters a couple of times to see the paintings, and I wrote about them on the blog.  Here are a few of the Rivera murals from just the ground floor.  These portray daily life and traditional festivals.  (His more political paintings are on the upper floors.)

Before dealing with muralism, the first hall of the museum presents the history of the building.  The structure is actually three buildings...  1) the former Church and Convent of Santa María de la Encarnación del Divino Verbo, dating from the 17th and 18th centuries,  2) the 18th century Customs House, where taxes were placed on goods entering the city, and 3) the 20th century renovation of the convent cloisters in neo-classical style done when the site was converted into the SEP headquarters.

Mexico City was built atop the ruins of the Aztec capital, and beneath the building numerous pre-Hispanic artifacts have been found.

There are also objects from the former convent, including a crown worn by novices when they took their vows.

The next hall deals with muralism in Mexico's prehistoric and pre-Hispanic past.  The oldest murals in the Americas, dating from 5500 B.C., are from a cave in Baja California.  Here is a replica of one of the paintings.

There are also reproductions of mural paintings from the pre-Hispanic civilizations.

Mural in the Red Temple at Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala

Mural from Teotihuacan

Portion of the mural from the temple at the Mayan city of Bonampak

Modern murals that drew their inspiration from pre-Hispanic cultures

"Rites" by Raúl Anguiano

"Death" by Maximiliano González de Olazábal

"Friar Bernardino de Sagahún and His Rescue of the History of Mexican Culture"

by José Chávez Morado

"The History of Religion Part I" by Diego Rivera

Numerous halls discuss aspects of mural painting.  There are a some large scale works (perhaps not technically murals) on display.

"Mexican Stoicism" by Fernando Andriacci

"Abundance" by César Menchaca García

More to come from the Museum of Muralism in the next post...

Relocation

 If you have read this blog over the years, you know that our favorite restaurant in Mexico City used to be a place called Angelopolitano.  They specialized in the cuisine of the state and city of Puebla, and I wrote many times about their excellent "moles" and superb "chiles en nogada".  At some point, it seemed that the food was not as good as it used to to be, and they often did not have dishes listed on the menu.

Last month when someone asked me about the restaurant, I checked its address on Google Maps.  I was shocked to see that it was listed as "permanently closed".  It also found a short article on the internet that said, without any explanation, that Angelopolitano had shut it doors after more than a decade in business.  Recently, on one of my long walks, I made a point of passing by its location on Puebla Street in the "colonia" of Roma Norte.  Indeed, the place where we had dined so many times over the last twelve years was closed.

Then, a few days ago, Alejandro was looking at the restaurant's Instagram account and saw, "Próximamente, Puebla 151"... "Coming soon", a new address on Puebla Street.  Yesterday, on another one of my long walks, I passed by that new address.  151 Puebla Street is one of those elegant old buildings, probably dating from the early 20th century, which abound in the Roma neighborhood.

It is an apartment building. On the ground floor, there are a couple of spaces (known in Spanish as "locales") for retail businesses.  On the far side beyond the main entrance is a store selling copying machines.  In the lower left corner of this photo there are the doors of a unoccupied space.  

There was a gentleman outside who appeared to be the doorman for the building.  I asked him if he knew if a restaurant called Angelopolitano was relocating at this address.  He pointed to the vacant "local", and said they had the space ready.  He said they were supposed to open last week, but for some reason were delayed.

I suppose that when Angelopolitano reopens, Alejandro and I will have to give it another chance and see if the quality has returned to its former level.

Upstairs at the Anthropology Museum

The crown jewel of Mexico City's many museums is the National Museum of Anthropology.  No where in the world will you find a comparable collection of treasures from Mexico's pre-Hispanic civilizations.  If a visitor to the city sees only one museum it should be this one.  Most visitors never make it to the upper floor which contains ethnographic exhibits dealing with the culture of Mexico's many indigenous peoples today.

Before the pandemic it seemed that they were doing a renovation of the upstairs.  Back then I wrote several entries on the blog, and there were still parts of the upstairs that were not completed and closed off.  It's been a while since I have been to the museum's upper floor.  I had no idea that another remodeling was taking place until I read earlier this month that  President Claudia Scheinbaum had attended the reopening of the floor.

I was eager to see what had been done, so last week I took a visit to the museum.

I went away very dissatisfied with the changes that had been made.

This map in the museum shows the many indigenous groups which live throughout the country.

More than 20 million people in Mexico identify as members of one of more than 60 groups, and more than 11 million live in households in which at least one family member speaks an indigenous language.  The highest concentration of indigenous peoples are in the states of Yucatán and Oaxaca.

The ethnographic exhibits used to be arranged by geographic region.  So, for example, if you wanted to learn about the Huichol people of western Mexico, there was an area that presented their way of life, religious beliefs and artwork with detailed explanations.  You went away with a better understanding of that group.

Now the exhibits are divided by themes such as food, fiestas, textiles.  So, continuing with the example of the Huichol people, you will see objects related to them throughout the museum floor.  It seemed to me a very disorganized manner of presentation with a lack of focus.

What irritated me even more was the lack of identification of objects.  There are around six thousands objects on display on the second floor... many of them beautiful works of art.  But, at least for the first half of the exhibit, there is very little signage.  There are showcases filled with masks, pottery, jewelry, etc. that are meant to show the diversity of the country's many tribes.  Yes, they are very lovely, but where do the individual pieces come from and who made them???

As I continued through the upper floor, finally the individual objects in the showcases were identified.  It almost seemed as if they hadn't finished with the signage and had not got around to the first half of the displays.  (It certainly would not be the first time the government had opened a project with fanfare before it was actually completed.)

I preferred the way the floor was organized previously.  As a person who frequently plays tour guide to visiting friends, I would find it very difficult to give a coherent tour of the exhibits as they are now displayed.

Tax Time

I always dreaded this time of year when I would have to start collecting tax documents to file my income tax with the IRS and the state of Ohio.  And just because I now live in Mexico does not mean that I don't have to pay Uncle Sam.  However, now, instead of waiting for paper documents to arrive in the mail, I have to gather them online and send them via a secure website to my accountant.  Even though it went fairly smoothly last year, it still dread it.

One tax bill which is quick, easy, and painless to pay is the real estate tax for my Mexico City apartment.  That arrived in the mail last week and was delivered to my apartment by the doorman.  I will go to the bank (any bank) and pay it today.  If I pay for the entire year before January 31st, I get a discount.

The real estate tax for the year on my three bedroom, two bathroom condo in a very nice Mexico City neighborhood is 9,748 pesos.  That converts to about 470 U.S. dollars.

That is definitely an enormous savings over what I was paying back in Ohio even for just half the year!

   

Snow on the Mountains

Although this is the dry season, we have had some precipitation over the past few days.  That precipitation of course falls as snow at the high elevations of the nearby volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, both of which are over 17,000 feet above sea level.  

A friend of Alejandro, a mountain climber who takes tourists on climbing expeditions, sent him this photo of "Popo" this morning.

I went to the "Webcams de México" website and found this image of the volcano in which you can see more clearly the snow covering the peak.

Alejandro's friend also sent this beautiful photo of the neighboring volcano "Izta".

With the chilly January temperatures that we have been having, I suspect that the mountains will remain snow-covered for a while.

Painting Complete

Last month, I told you that I had begun a painting.  Other than the annual painting that I do for my Christmas card, it had been quite a while since I had done any artwork.  I finally finished the picture a few days ago.  It's of the Palace of Sayil.

Sayil was a Mayan city in the Yucatán Peninsula which was probably established around AD 800.  It rapidly reached its height around AD 900 when it had a population of about 10,000 people with another 5000 living in tributary communities.  By AD 1000 the city had been abandoned.  The largest and most impressive of the remaining ruins is that of the Grand Palace which is over 275 feet long.

This week I will take the painting to a nearby shop to have it framed.  I will hang it by the entrance to the bedroom in the apartment next to where I already have a wooden carving of a Mayan king on the wall.

I can put the paints away for a while, but I already have a subject in mind for my next painting.  It will be for my 2025 Christmas card.  I know it seems early to even think about that, but I need to do the painting, and get cards printed and made out before I go to Ohio in the fall.

Fifty Eight Years Ago

Alejandro sent me some images that he found on the internet.  It was fifty eight years ago yesterday, January 11, 1967, that it snowed in Mexico City.  Depending upon which part of the city you lived, between two and seventeen inches of snow fell.