Travel Journal: Guadalajara, Instituto Cultural Cabanas

Instituto Cultural Cabanas

The emotional height of my trip to Guadalajara was visiting the Cultural Institute Cabanas, a museum dedicated to the arts.  As seen in the photograph above, the Institute is housed in a beautiful old building in Guadalajara's Central Historico and is, according to museum literature, the most representative of Jalisco's architectural style and one of the most important neo-classical architectural pieces in Mexico.  The building is over 2 centuries old and once served as The House of Charity and Mercy, an institution dedicated to the shelter and care of destitute children.

The building itself has seen many changes over the years, both in structure and purpose.  After the Mexican Revolution ended, the building returned to its original use as a house of charity.  In 1937 Jose Clemente Orozco painted large sections of the interior of the main chapel, fresco style, and the paintings are  . . .  well . . . breath taking? amazing? thought provoking? awe inspiring?  The frescoes are symbolic representations of Mexico's rich and complex history.

I really don't know what I can say about them, but I am so thankful to have been touched by them.

I had never heard of Jose Clemente Orozco prior to my visit to the Cultural Institute Cabanas.  Luke had told me a bit about what I was about to see, but walking in left me almost speechless, and anyone who knows me knows that almost never happens.

I was not able to take pictures inside of the museum, but following this link will provide you with an image of the painting that occupies the inside of the large dome shown in my photos, and this link will provide a few more photos of the frescoes. I cannot express how seeing these frescoes touched emotions so deep in my heart and brought tears to my eyes.

While I was at the museum, I heard only Spanish and was not able to understand any of what the docents were saying.  I had to wait until I was home to learn more about the paintings and Orozco. Reading excerpts from museum information regarding Orozco's frescoes and the other exhibits only further explained to me what I felt from seeing them first hand. 

from museum literature: Orozco was passionate by two periods in Mexico's life: The Conquest and The Revolution. He saw the conquest, with all reason, the decisive event in our history, the great rupture and the large merger. The revolution is the contradictory complement to the conquest, the reply that, by refusing it, consumes it.  Orozco painted the conquest and its consequences: Evangelization, slavery of the Indians, and the slow gestation of another society... In Cabana's frescoes, in front of Cortez's fighter figure stands a Franciscan armed with a cross. Back, the same angel of victory kisses Cortez in the front mural. The mural displays a scroll with alphabet letters. The cross frees because it teaches to read and opens the understanding to the new wisdom, but also it enslaves, deceives, steals, and kills.

earlier excerpt: In Orozco's conception, painting is to express our thirst, never satisfied, of absolute meanings. Orozco did not paint timeless certainties; instead he painted certainty's thirst.

After leaving the chapel hosting Orozco's Frescoes, we entered a smaller side gallery that hosted the exhibition Viento del Oeste, Viento del Este, which translates to East Wind, West Wind - the title of a novel by Pearl S. Buck, a novel "which analyses the changes undergone by the main character in the contemporary world. This is a story of silence, a vindication of the willingness to renovate, to reinvent, and the new airs which carry a contemporary vision, typified by the words of Kwei-lan, the leading character:'what if our ancestors were wrong' " 

I was thrilled to see in person works by artists well known such as 

Pablo Picasso, Luis Seone, Miquel Barcelo, Vari Carames, and Salvador Dali.

As I said earlier, seeing these works was very emotional for me, and I never stopped counting my blessing at being there at all for a single second.  After leaving this exhibit I had to sit in the thankfully empty courtyard and let a few tears roll off my cheeks until I could regain my composure and head off to the smaller galleries tucked away in various parts of the museum.

And, as I noted before, leaving the museum only brought us back out into the art filled, pedestrian spaces of El Centro where we enjoyed these chair sculptures, and the general beauty of the area.  Here, the sun shone brightly and the breeze cooled nicely. Sigh.

And then of course --- we had so much more to see!

More stories and pictures downtown Guadalajara coming soon. Very soon I hope.