Yesterday was the big day for visiting museums. My colleague and I visited four museums – all of them conveniently located near the Monterrey’s Gran Plaza.
The first was
Museo de Historia Mexicana. There were no temporary exhibitions on display, but the permanent exhibition was well designed, telling the history of Mexico through original artefacts combined with models of people and interactive media. For a mathematician, the hands-on approach to the Maya numeral system was particularly interesting, where you could move “stones” and “sticks” from one side to the other, having the computer calculating which number you were representing. The Maya calendars were explained in a similarly interactive way. The big models of major pyramid sites in Mexico, combined with videos from the sites, were also interesting. All in all: well worth a look!
The second museum we visited was the
Museo del Noreste. The rain was pouring down as we were exiting the Museo de Historia Mexicana, and as the Museo del Noreste is connected to Museo de Historia Mexicana by a indoor bridge and it was even included in the same ticket, we chose to have a look. We saw a temporary exhibition on Spanish history (which was not uninteresting, but our mind was not completely set to European history lessons on our first full day in Mexico) and the permanent exhibition on the history of Northeastern Mexico (which we walked through even more quickly). Not bad – but not exactly what we were looking for. As we left this museum, however, the rain had stopped for a while, so the Museo del Noreste did its job in keeping us occupied.
The third museum was
Museo del Palacio. My experience from several cities is that as the museums narrow down their focus to smaller and smaller geographical areas, the museums get less and less interesting. This was certainly the case for me here. Museo del Palacio tells the story of the district Nuevo Leon. This was also a well-designed display set in a beautiful building (the State Government Palace), but we walked through quickly. Maybe better support for non-Spanish readers might have helped – while all signs around the museum were in Spanish, English-readers got the the possibility of reading large chunks of text at the beginning of each of the four main parts.
The highlight of the day, however, was the
MARCO (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey), which was a beautiful building with a cute bird outside (by Juan Soriano). Inside, the permanent exhibitions were closed, but there were two interesting temporary exhibitions: one on the photography of Loretta Lux, the other on the paintings of Tomás Sánchez. This was an interesting combination.
Loretta Lux’s artworks were photos of children dressed in unmodern, which she had digitally manipulated and placed against a background. This was not done in a “technically perfect” way – the child often “stood out” against the background in an “unnatural way”, two children were placed next to each other in anatomically impossible ways (as if they were paper dolls). Moreover, the children’s skin colours were manipulated. The total result was one of unease – the children looked misplaced, pale, in unfamiliar surroundings. Although several of the photos were in themselves interesting, my main thought after seeing lots and lots of them was “why keep doing this instead of exploring something new?”
Tomás Sánchez’ paintings were mostly of nature, in which one, small person was often placed, titled “the meditator” or such. The theme “small man in big, beautiful nature” seemed to be in most paintings, and the paintings bordered on kitch. (The line between these paintings and the “moose at sunset” genre seemed thin.) However, there were a few very different paintings, in which nature did not consist of trees but of garbage. Here, the “message” was even clearer than in the others. Particularly interesting was the one in which Jesus Christ was lying on a garbage dump, crucified and naked, and where paintings of Sánchez were also lying around. (It could be argued, of course, that it was not Jesus, but just some random, naked, crucified man.) Most of the paintings were beautiful as well as technically great – but of debateable artistic value.
The contrast between the two artists is great. Lux’ photos are almost minimalistic. They are unnatural. She uses technical imperfections to convey some sort of artificiality. She does not have a clear message. Sánchez’ paintings are huge, showing a tiny man in breathtaking surroundings. They are (mostly) technically great paintings, but still does not seem natural (they are certainly “set up”, unnaturally beautiful and with a human figure in just the right place). His message seems clear – almost too clear to bear.
Walking through these two exhibitions was fun. The museum building was great.
All in all: what better to do than visit museums during a rainy day in Monterrey?
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