For the Kids

Today, April 30th, is Children's Day (Día del Niño) in Mexico.  Children often receive gifts from their relatives, and parties are held in the schools.  (Alejandro's nephew Ezra, now in his last year of junior high, is too old for Children's Day.)

A children's festival was being held on the Zócalo for the entire week, so last Saturday, Alejandro and I decided to check it out.

The Zócalo was jammed with people.

The festival included what was billed as the world's largest inflatable castle.

It wasn't opening (for children only) until later that afternoon.

Alejandro posing in a silly umbrella hat that he bought from a vendor.

After a while he took it off because it was giving him a headache.

There were tents where the kids could play games, do artwork and participate in educational activities.

The fire department was dressing the children as firefighters and letting them pretend that they were putting out fires with hoses.

The kids could go inside an ambulance, a firetruck and a police car.

They could try out their skills on a small soccer field.

There was a tent with a dinosaur display.

And there was a small zipline.  (In Spanish they call it a "tirolesa".)

We quickly grew tired of maneuvering through the crowds under a broiling sun.  We left the festival and went to a nearby rooftop café to relax and cool off with a cold drink.

"Payment in Kind" Art

As I mentioned in the last post, a large portion of the Treasury Department's art collection is from artists who paid their taxes by donating paintings or sculptures in lieu of monetary payments.  Currently, the Treasury Department's art museum is displaying works by the "Founders" of this "Payment in Kind" program.  These artists were the first to pay their taxes by donating their artwork between 1957 and 1965.  

Here are some of the paintings that were donated by those artists...

"Zapata"

by Adolfo Best Maugard

1954

A portrait of the famous revolutionary Emiliano Zapata

"The Park"

by José Reyes Meza

undated

"The Musicians"

by Lola Cuato

undated

"The Mandate"

by Luis Nishizawa

1955

"Head"

by Agustín Lazo

1940

"Sand Mines"

by Amando Lugo

1957

"The Alameda of Santa María"

by Angelina Beloff

1958

Beloff was the first wife of Diego Rivera.

The ornate bandstand still graces the park in the neighborhood of Santa María la Ribera.

"Against Tyranny"

by Roberto Montenegro

undated

"The Wait"

by Fernando Castro Pacheco

undated

I am familiar with Castro Pacheco because he painted the murals in the government palace in Mérida, Yucatán.

"The Night"

by Guillermo Meza

1958

"Lucila and the Judas Figures"

("Artist's Studio")

by Diego Rivera

1954

The Judas figures are large sculptures made of papier mache that are burned on Holy Saturday.

"Containing the Ice of the Danube River in Bratislava"

by Diego Rivera

undated

This painting was done on one of the artist's trips to the Soviet bloc.

The Art of the Tax Collectors

After viewing the toy exhibit at the Museum of Cultures of the World, I walked just a few steps down the street to another colonial building.

This structure served as the Palace of the Archbishop of Mexico City.  It was first built in 1530, but has been remodeled numerous times.  The building as we see it now dates from 1771.

In 1867, the "Secretaria de la Hacienda" (The Treasury Department) took over the former palace.  In 1994 it was converted into the Art Museum of the Treasury Department.  Yes, the Treasury Department has an extensive art collection.  Part of it consists of what is called the "Colección Acervo Patrimonial" (Heritage Collection), over ten thousand objects of historic or artistic value that were rescued.  The collection includes antiques, documents, furniture, paintings, sculptures, even old office equipment.  The other part of their collection is from their "payment in kind" program.  Begun in 1957, this program allows artists to pay their taxes by donating pieces of art.

The museum often has special exhibits of contemporary art, but right now they are still celebrating the museum's 30th anniversary with a selection of items from the Heritage Collection and the "Payment in Kind" Program.

What caught my eye from the Heritage Collection was a series of paintings by an artist with whom I was unfamiliar.  Antonio Ruiz (known by the nickname of El Corcito... the Little Deer). He is described as an artist who portrayed with "much detail, humor and irony everyday scenes of a traditional Mexico in transition toward modernity".  I did a little research on him and read that he was a very slow painter who paid great attention to detail and sometimes only did three or four paintings a year.  He also dabbled in surrealism and worked for a time as a set designer in Hollywood.  I found his paintings on display here to be very interesting.

"Serenade" 1940

"Las Changuitas" 1943

I'm puzzled by the title of this one.  "Changuita" literally means "little monkey" (and you will notice that there is a monkey at one side of the painting).  According to the dictionary, in Mexico, "changuita" can also mean young servant.  Are these two servant girls out and about on their day off?

"The Miners" 1941

"The Soprano or the Rooster" 1940

Definitely a bit of surrealism here.

"The Girlfriend of the Milkman"  1940

"Self Portrait" 1956

This one made me laugh.  The turkey looks in the mirror and sees himself as a peacock, and paints his self portrait in an abstract style.

I found this artist quite fascinating.  I will have to remember the name Antonio Ruiz, and I hope that in my museum visits I will come across more of his art.

In the next post, paintings that served as tax payments...

A World of Toys

The National Museum of Cultures of the World is located in a colonial building behind the National Palace which once served as the Royal Mint.  Later, it housed the National Museum where many pre-Hispanic treasures were displayed until the National Museum of Anthropology was opened.  Today it is a rather odd museum.  Most of the items in its collection are replicas of works from civilizations such as ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.

There are frequent special exhibits which are sometimes interesting and sometimes disappointing.  My last visit here was a big disappointment.  The exhibit of "Ancient Treasures of Bulgaria" turned out to be mostly photographs of objects in Bulgarian museums.

A couple weeks ago, I returned to see an exhibit called "Around the World in 150 Toys".  I was prepared to be disappointed again, but instead I found it to be a fairly interesting show.

  

The oldest toy in the exhibit (although it is a replica of the original) is a jaguar figure from pre-Hispanic Oaxaca.  The original is more than 1000 years old.

Notice that the figure has wheels.  It is quite amazing that the pre-Hispanic civilizations of Mexico had wheeled toys, but never applied the wheel to more practical uses.

Many of the toys were dolls, often in traditional costumes from their nations.

From China, a male doll dressed in wedding attire

From Bulgaria a doll dressed in a traditional dance costume 

The well-known nesting Matrioshka dolls of Russia

A doll from the Moravia region of the Czech Republic

A doll from the Ukraine

A drummer boy from India

This doll from Poland portrays a Tatar horseman.  The Tatars from Asia invaded Poland in the 13th century.

A doll from the Seminole tribe of Florida

Kokeshi dolls from Japan

These dolls had their origin among the aboriginal Ainu people of northern Japan

Some of the other toys in the exhibit...

A toy marimba from Guatemala

Doll house furniture from Hungary

A horse from Sweden

A sailboat from Greece

A battery operated tourist bus from China

A puppet from Indonesia

Nutcrackers from Lithuania

Two figures warmly wrapped in fur parkas sit in front of their igloo

This was created by the Inuit people of northern Canada.