This afternoon I found myself with free time near the Alameda – a big park in the center of Mexico City – and I decided to visit the Franz Mayer Museum.  I’ve always remembered it as one of my favorites from the summer I spent as an intern here, but it had been years since I last visited. Some of the exhibition spaces in the permanent collection were closed, and it seems that they are in the process of replacing the old placards with newer ones, but otherwise the museum was just as I remembered it.

The permanent collection features decorative art  from 16th to 19th century Mexico, the focus being items that were used, encompassing pieces from Europe and Asia as well as Mexico.  The exhibits are organized by medium – furniture, silver work, ceramics – and use – religious or domestic.  I particularly like this museum because of it’s approachability; the pieces are immediately recognizable – a chair, a desk, a trunk – but the ornate painting, carving and inlay that they display are unique to their own time and place.  For the visitor, they are a glimpse into the past, into the life of New Spain’s wealthy.

One large screen shows a painting of the conquest of Mexico on one side, complete with armored conquistadores fighting Aztecs in the streets, and an aerial view of Mexico City on the other, but not the Mexico City that I know – a much smaller version of Mexico City, where there is only the center of the city, with no paved streets and no sky scrapers.  It makes me wonder what that other Mexico City was like.

Today there was also a temporary exhibit on Mexico’s landscapes from the Franz Mayer and SURA collections.  The exhibit includes paintings and photographs of Mexico’s landscapes at different times.  These included places – or at least place names – that I know from the Mexico City of today – Tlalpan, Naucalpan, Xochimilco – but the locations depicted in the artwork bear no resemblance to the places I know.  An oil painting shows Tlalpan to be a river with trees, and a grassy sand bank, but the Tlalpan I know is a busy 6 lane road with a metro line running down the middle.  The painting of Naucalpan showed a view of mountians and ruins, yet Naucalpan today is in the middle of the urban jungle.  The images of Xochimilco showed rustic huts and boats filled with fruit and vegetables, nothing like the murky waterways with brightly colored barges I visited once years ago.

The museum is located in an old cloister, the galleries arranged around an interior courtyard with trees and a fountain.  Regular admission is $50 pesos, but to enter the cloister it only costs $10, and it is a lovely place to have a cup of tea, read a book, or catch up on all the family gossip.  I found that the museum’s souvenir shop also has an excellent selection of books, some from their own press, on various topics from architecture and fine art to Mexican cuisine and children’s books. The shop also has some cute locally made items and jewelry, but what I’d go back for are the books – well, the books, the courtyard and the collections, not necessarily in that order.

Location: Hidalgo 45. Centro Histórico. México D.F. 06300