The Contemporary Art Museums of San Luis Potosí

Historically, Mexico City has been the star around which Mexican cultural production orbits. Or so the story goes. It’s a narrative propagated in large part by producers in the capital, and its levers of power, but the truth is that right across the country there are major centers of artistic production, and always have been. Some of these emerge from indigenous communities in the most remote spaces, others in small towns and cities from Baja California to Quintana Roo, from Puebla to Zacatecas. And then there are cities which have decided to define themselves in their own right by cultural practice, bringing art into the heart of their communities to the extent that it becomes part of how a place self-identifies.

San Luis Potosí is one of these, perhaps no great surprise given that it was twice the capital of Mexico. The city, home to the third largest colonial center in the country, exudes cultural literacy, a fact perhaps best exemplified in the existence of three first-rate museums.

The first of these is the Leonora Carrington Museum, set within SLP’s vast Centro de las Artes, a former prison. Carrington is, of course, a world-renowned figure from the surrealist movement, which was at once international but also found something of a spiritual home in Mexico. Her work fits hand-in-glove into the ex-jail, with individual cells given over to smaller work, drawings or artistic experiments, and the larger esplanades housing her more substantial sculptures. Not only does it feature a substantial trajectory of Carrington’s work, tracing her pathways almost from point of inception through to some of her most substantial, best-known pieces, but the fragmented, episodic nature of the cells gives personal, close-up access to her artwork. Equally, outside in the yards, her larger sculptures pop up in a series of surprising visual moments, with different viewing heights and angles available, making for highly rewarding, repeat-but-not-duplicated visual access.

A walk away sit two other contemporary art museums. First up, in a unique 19th-century building which has reinvented itself over the years from its time as a meat market to its existence as a post office, the Museum of Contemporary Art has now settled into its role, which it took on in 2009. The MAC has an extensive permanent collection, on show in rotation, as well as temporary exhibitions which change every 2-4 months. It’s especially strong on Potosino and national artists who may not yet exist as household names, but who are nonetheless the authors of interesting, challenging and distinctive work.

Museo Leonora Carrington, Photo Courtesy of the Museum

Just a couple of blocks further on is the Museo Federico Silva, initially established as the only museum dedicated to contemporary sculpture in Latin America, which focuses on its permanent exhibition of the work of the eponymous sculptor, alongside rotating exhibitions of other artists in temporary galleries. Silva’s work is monumental in scale, focusing on mythical, pre-hispanic shapes and forms, and although this building too had a series of past lives, including as a hospital, it was re-conceived with his sculptures in mind, to the extent that the two now seem inextricable. As with the Leonara Carrington sculptures, multiple access points to viewing the pieces are well-conceived, edifying, and on occasion revelatory.

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Photo Courtesy of the Museum

All three museums have strong, temporal programs, alongside special calendars of events, which make regular, almost accidental visits worthwhile. Added to which, the work of Leonora Carrington and Federico Silva almost demands relationship-building; these are artists to spend time with, to get to know, over years rather than days. Just as both are part of the fabric of Mexico’s art history and aesthetics, so they inveigle their way into your own consciousness, becoming characters in the history of your own time under the sun.

Museo Federico Silva, Photo Courtesy of the Museum