Desultory Museuming

I’m still in Mexico City; I’m still awaiting the delivery of my replacement bank card and driver’s license.  

On Sunday I finally bought a new cell phone, at a “Sanborn’s” department store in the Centro Coyoacán mall, putting it on my credit card.  It’s a cheap phone (a Polaroid, it cost about $140 US with the plan) and it works like one—i.e., very slow and full of pop-up ads.  But at least I have phone capability and Google Maps again.  In one way it’s superior to my old phone: it works!  My old one, with Sprint, was supposed to give me service in Mexico through “Sprint Worldwide,” but it only did so for a few miles past the border; after that I could only get data in wi-fi zones.  This cheap thing is on a Mexican carrier and has a 4G connection everywhere. 

My new Mexican phone number, for those who want to call or send me texts, is: (+52) 55 6903 0700. 

My first task with it was to call my bank and WSDOT and ask where my cards were.  BECU said they thought my new bank card would be mailed on Friday.  WSDOT confirmed that they received my replacement form but had no idea when or how the new driver’s license would be mailed.

Great.

In the meantime my Spanish class has come to an end, which gives me more free time in Mexico City.  So yesterday I went back to the city center to visit some more of the many museums there.  I had grand, multi-museum ambitions, but for various reasons the day became a bit of washout.  My first instinct was to catalog it as below blog-worthy, but then I thought, well, first of all no one has heard from me in a while, and secondly, there’s something valid in the experience of a vacation day where things just...don’t fully succeed.

I started my morning at the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, which is dedicated to honoring the victims of genocide throughout history: a “downer” museum, but from what I’d heard quite a powerful one. 

Unfortunately I misread the ticket options, and tried to buy a General Admission ticket only to wind up with a pass to the temporary exhibit only.  I didn't realize it until I tried to proceed to the general exhibits, whereupon I was stopped by a guard (who rushed into the elevator to prevent me from going up), and at that point I didn’t feel like either trying to ask for an “upgrade” or paying again for a full ticket, so I left.

But I did see the temporary exhibit, which was a series of art installations on the subject of “Feminicidio,” or the murder of women.  (Strangely appropriate as I’m working on a feminist novel.)  There was a room projecting gigantic slides of murdered girls’ bedrooms; another arranged like halls in a police station with dossiers on slain women and posters of individual stories; a third with photos of female faces in which one could step close to speakers on the wall to hear “Sounds of Death” (my morbid curiosity resulted only in the sound of a subway station). 

My Spanish class enabled me to at least contextualize the wall displays full of sobering statistics for Mexico, and all in all it was a case of powerful facts overwhelming one’s subjective opinion of the artistic frame.  An effective museuming downer, then (though energizing for my rape-and-revenge heroine within), at any rate enough so for me to willingly postpone the barred Holocaust/Rwanda rooms for a return visit.

Almost next door to the museum was what I hoped would be an antidote: the Museo de Arte Popular, which is dedicated to Mexican handcrafts and folk art.  The kitsch alert was front and center here, with a painted Volkswagen Beetle next to the ticket booth, but I bought my ticket anyway and went in.

The museum is four stories around an atrium, the upward view through which is enlivened by a population of gigantic colorful creatures on the balconies, which I gather are taken out and put on parade during a festival in October.

The static displays, alas, mostly failed to live up to their whimsically evocative ushers.  There is an essential problem in distinguishing a museum of pop art from an actual art gallery, kitchenware shop, or toy store, and in this case the four floors of folk art couldn’t help evoking those more specialized venues where one felt one would find better stuff.  In short, and quite possibly because the objects weren’t for sale, the museum was somewhat dull.

Four floors of museuming is four floors by any other name, and when I emerged into the crowded streets at midday I was already tired.  I had a quick torta lunch at a little restaurant on the pedestrian mall, and then decided on one more outing: I hadn’t yet seen the interior of the Palacio Nationale, which hosts several large-scale murals by Diego Rivera. 

It was a long walk down the pedestrian mall, dodging crowds and the small army of shouting hawkers trying to push cards into one’s hand, to get to the Zocalo, scene of my first day in Mexico City.  There, impossible to miss, was the block-long Palacio Nacionale, Mexico’s main government building. 

Alas, it was closed to the public.  The flag was at half mast for, I later learned, the anniversary of the death of Benito Juarez, but the metal barricades and ranks of policemen standing under the arcades with plexiglass shields suggested the presence of a more current dignitary as a reason.

And that concluded my day of desultory museuming.   I headed back to my hostel to rest.