We got some culture! Three museums in two days, one of which was Casa Barragán, a museum we’d tried to go to last time we were here but messed up the calendar and then missed our entrance time by an hour. The image above is from a postcard of that museum—you have to pay an additional $30 to be allowed to take photos. It didn’t seem worth it. It’s a beautifully designed house and I can see why architecture and design nerds love it. But it was a true pain in the ass to get tickets, the cost was pretty high, and, while I’m glad we went, I don’t know that it quite lived up to the hype. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d move right in if given the option (but we’d need to rip out the shag carpet).

However, the use of color in the space was REALLY cool. Walls painted in bright yellow. Panels of gold paint that reflected the light in such a way that the whole room filled with a golden aura. High ceilings that let in tons of light from the outside. The image above was of a section of the roof patio, which was this expansive tiled space, surround mostly by white walls, with a few walls painted in bright pink and orange. There was nothing else on the patio—just the sky above and some trees draping their foliage over the tops of the walls. The guide referred to it as an open-air chapel and I’d agree. It felt like a space for reflection and contemplation. I might have made it a little less austere if I lived there, though—add some plants in pots and make it more of a space I’d want to spend lots of time in. But I get the sense that Barragán was pretty austere—he never married, his bedroom had just a single bed, and there was a lot of religious iconography throughout the house.

This mural was in another museum we visited—el Palacio de Bellas Artes. I’d actually seen it before, in Denver of all places, when the Denver Museum of Art had a Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibition. The Rockefellers had commissioned Rivera to paint the original version of this mural—known as Man at the Crossroads—at the Rockefeller Center in New York. However, after the mural was completed, Nelson Rockefeller told Rivera he had to paint over the portrait of Lenin (you can see ol’ V.I. Lenin just to the right of the central character, between the propeller wings).

Rivera refused and later that year, the Rockefeller Center plastered over the top of the mural, destroying it. Luckily for all of us, Rivera had taken black and white photos of the mural, anticipating that this might happen. He used those photos to recreate the mural—which he renamed it Man, Controller of the Universe—at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

This art-deco building is primarily a performing arts space but it’s also filled with art. While Rivera’s mural is probably the most well-known piece, the palace is filled with other enormous, floor-to-ceiling murals on the walls overlooking the central atrium. Definitely worth the visit and it’s a gorgeous space—the details are super cool and I’d love to see a performance here. But I’m going to skip to the final museum now, which might have been my favorite of the three.

There isn’t much I like more than an activity at museum. I still have a postcard I made about ten years ago at the Denver Art Museum. So when I learned that not only was there a printmaking museum (Museo Nacional de la Estampa) but that you got to make your own art? Sign me up.

It’s a smaller museum dedicated to Mexican graphic arts—printmaking, lithographs, woodcuts. It heavily featured one artist—Patricia Soriano—although I think they change the exhibits pretty often. She had an interesting mix of pieces, most of which were pretty bizarre and a little dark.

You can see she’s pretty varied in her style of art and this is just two of MANY. No painting the same pond of water lilies over and over again here. It’s that woodcut style, though—the one on the left—that I really like. And guess what? When you’ve finished your tour of the museum, you can go into the workshop and make your own. Which I did. If you want to see them, you’ll have to come to my house. But if you don’t go to my house, you should definitely go to this museum.