As you may know, the Mexican Museum in San Francisco has recently undergone some drastic changes. The museum has closed it's space in Fort Mason Center and awaits to relocate into a new building that is currently under construction in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center.
While the museum waits to re-open, they have been re-evaluating their collection, holding exhibitions in temporary spaces and building partnerships with cultural and academic institutions from San Francisco to Mexico City.
One of these partnerships includes the Museum of Cholula in Puebla, Mexico. The Museum of Cholula is composed of a number of buildings that was originally built in the early 1900’s as a sanitarium. The entire building complex sits on top of an ancient pyramid that was covered with dirt by the Spanish. According to the director of the Mexican Museum, Andrew Kluger, this was a tradition of the Spanish conquistadors - to either destroy existing pyramids or cover them and build a church at the highest point.
Now, two of these buildings will permanently be dedicated to the Mexican Museum of San Francisco to showcase works from the permanent collection of their permanent collection.
Currently, one of the galleries of the is showcasing a fantastic collection of alebrijes, a word invented by Pedro Linares in the 1950’s referring to paper mache sculptures, often depicting mythical animals and creatures.
Several months ago Robert Mc Donald took a trip to Cholula with Andrew Kluger to tour the premises and visit the current exhibition. The video below highlights this trip and the brilliant collection of Mexican folk art now on view in Cholula.