Mexico City’s Marvelous Museum of Popular Art

Those kooky skeletons, colourful tapestries and crazy masks you see at the markets in Mexico all have stories. Mexico City’s Museum of Popular Art is the place to learn about them.

Mexico’s arts and crafts are so much more than souvenirs for you to take home. The country’s popular art – art created by the people – has always been rooted in the everyday life of its people and has had a special place in Mexico’s culture and identity. Well, that’s how I’m going to justify yet another visit to a museum in Mexico City.

Mexico City’s Marvelous Museum of Popular Art

We had already done the Frida and Diego trail, despite declaring that we were avoiding museums this trip in favour of local travel unless the museum offers real insight into the everyday life and local culture of a place, such as the Tenement Museum on New York’s Lower East Side. And this is why I decided to visit the Museum of Popular Art.

I studied Mexico’s popular art and cultural identity as part of my master’s degree in Latin American studies, so it was impossible to resist visiting a museum dedicated to the stuff. I also have boxes of Mexican arts and crafts in storage in Sydney, which I’ve been missing since we’ve been on the road.

The Museo de Arte Popular is also situated in one of the city’s most splendid art deco buildings, which is reason enough to visit. Then there are the stunning displays of pottery, ceramics, glass, metalwork, woodcarving, bark-painting, basketry, weaving, textiles, costumes, and paper maché if you appreciate arts and crafts or just like gawking at gorgeous things.

But if you’re also interested in learning where those beautiful things came from, when they were made, and how they were used, and, you like knowing that they had uses other than just hanging on your walls, then a couple of hours here is a must.

The museum exhibits are arranged by theme rather than displayed chronologically, so you need to take a look at each label to learn when they were made. The first two rooms on the ‘Roots of Mexican Art’ and the ‘Roots of Crafts and Popular Art’ include pre-Hispanic pieces – both decorative and practical, including children’s toys.

It’s from these pre-Hisplanic objects that many modern pieces are derived, demonstrating the longevity of some of the crafts you see in the markets, and the creative practices more generally.

Popular art in Mexico has always been rooted in popular culture, everyday life, daily rituals and celebrations, and that’s what I most love about it. For instance, all those extravagantly decorated skulls and eccentric skeletons are associated with Dia de Muertos or Day of the Dead rituals, such as candy-giving.

While it’s encouraging to see the images of Frida Kahlo and the Lucha Libre (Mexican Wrestling) being incorporated into fashion, accessories and art by young Mexican artists and popularising them for a new and younger generation, sadly, many traditional crafts are still being lost to migration, just as many were abandoned at the turn of the last century due to industrialisation.

Unfortunately many centuries-old crafts and arts only continue to be practiced today because they remain popular with affluent Mexicans and tourists. All the more reason for you to do your bit and go shopping, right?

For more about Mexican popular art, see the following sites:

Museo de Arte Popular (official museum site)
The Popular Arts FoundationMexConnect, crammed with many stories on all sorts of arts and crafts from across Mexico