Polanco: Museo Jumex & Museo Soumaya
Wednesday, February 19, 2025: On Wednesday morning, we woke up to a steady rain and a forecast for more rain until at least 2:00. We decided we’d spend the morning in two museums, starting in Polanco at the Museo Jumex.
Polanco is a privileged neighborhood in CDMX, with fine restaurants, shopping malls chock-full of designer clothing stores, and sky-high rents.
The sole heir of Jumex, the Mexican juice company, has amassed one of Latin America’s leading contemporary art collections in Museo Jumex. Temporary exhibits draw on around 2600 pieces from renowned Mexican and international artists, including Gabriel Orozco, Fernanda Gomez, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons.British architect David Chipperfield designed the museum’s sawtooth roof.
The exhibit we saw today was Gabriel Orozco’s career-spanning exhibition, “Politécnico Nacional.” The artist was born in 1962 in Jalapa, Mexico. In 1966, the family moved to Mexico City, where Orozco grew up attending schools that emphasized active forms of learning; there he was immersed in Mexico’s progressive cultural milieu.
Orozco studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, UNAM (1981-1984) and then at El Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid (1986-1987). From 1987 to 1991, he hosted “El Taller de los Viernes” (The Friday Workshop) in his house in Tlalpan, a collaborative learning workshop with younger artists Abraham Cruzvillegas, Gabriel Kuri, Damian Ortega and Jerónimo López (aka Dr Lakra).
Orozco’s interventions into urban and natural spaces, both public and private, started out in his walks around Mexico City and Madrid in the mid-1980s. These developed into actions as seen in works such as Until You Find Another Yellow Schwalbe (1996), in which he drove around the streets of Berlin looking to park his own yellow motorcycle next to another one of the same color and model (see photos below).
Orozco’s entire body of work could be thought of as a compost of commodities.For example, while traveling in Brazil in 1991, one of his first site-specific interventions was to place discarded oranges on trestle tables in a market that had recently packed up. The fruits were carefully arranged, one on each table, and then photographed. Through this simple gesture, the market was transformed into a kind of game board, with the leftover oranges as pieces in a new system of play.
While living in New York, he created ephemeral interventions in the supermarket near his apartment, disrupting the ordered universe of products in the aisles. Gatos y Sandías, for instance, documents cans of cat food placed on a display of watermelons. Gato en la jungla mixes cans of cat food with cans of green beans to depict cats peering out of tropical greenery. In these cases, commodities were taken out of their normal circuit of distribution and inserted in a different one, captured in photographs that would end up belonging to another kind of market. This basic game between different modes of circulation and distribution has preoccupied him ever since.
Playing with the idea of commodity lies at the heart of Orozco’s practice, such as La DS (1993), a sliced Citroën DS as a deconstructed cultural commodity of French modernity.
One of Orozco’s most famous works is Caja vacía de zapatos (Empty Shoe Box), which was sitting on the floor of the museum watched over carefully by two museum guards.
Adjacent to the Museo Jumex in posh Polanco is Museo Soumaya. The silver, rotated-rhomboid shape of this private museum is an art extravaganza in and of itself. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim named his six-story behemoth after his late wife. Designed by son-in-law architect Fernando Romero, with guidance by Frank Gehry, Soumaya is plated with 16,000 aluminum hexagons.
We didn’t go inside but instead admired the interesting building, set off with lavender jacarandas, as we entered Museo Jumex and later, as we stood on its balconies.
Museo Soumaya
We also had views of gleaming high rises and high-end shopping malls all around.
Bosque de Chapultepec: Museo Nacional de Antropologia
We took an Uber to the Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Bosque de Chapultepec. This museum presents the rich history of Mexico in a fascinating, accessible way. We were able to get close to artifacts and even a reproduction of a pyramid from Teotihuacán. Giant Olmec head statues and intricate temples sit in verdant outdoor courtyards, uniting the old world and real world. Sadly, maybe because of the rain, the outdoor areas were roped off today.
There is so much to see in this museum that even a whole day wouldn’t do it justice. We first were met by an impressive cascade in the central courtyard known as el paraguas (the umbrella), which acts as a reminder of our connection to nature.
Various halls line up around the perimeter of the courtyard showing the rich aspects of Mexico’s long and varied culture: Teotihuacán Hall, Lost Toltecas, the Mexica (aka Aztec), Ozxaca and the Gulf of Mexico, and finally, Maya.
Condesa: Parque México & Avenida Amsterdam
We enjoyed a nice lunch at Santas Conchas Lonchería. We shared Tlalpeño Broth (Chicken, rice, chickpeas, vegetables, avocado, chipotle and melted cheese) and a Chili Dog (Pork sausage with chili, tomato, onion, cuaresmeño chili, mayonnaise) served with french fries. We also shared a Concha (shell), a traditional Hispanic sweet bread (pan dulce) with similar consistency to a brioche. Conchas get their name from their round shape and their striped, seashell-like appearance. Eating one was like eating air!
The heart of the Condesa neighborhood is the peaceful Parque México, the oval shape of which reflects its earlier use as an hippodromo (horse-racing track). The art deco park opened in 1927 and the sculpture of an indigenous woman holding water pitchers at one entrance was designed by great Mexican sculptor José María Fernández Urbina.
Parque México is ringed by a tree-lined median walkway called Avenida Amsterdam that is almost a park itself. After lunch, we walked the circular route around the walkway, enjoying an overview of Condesa, with roads running off it like wagon-wheel spokes. Each section has its own flavor, and intersects with sculptures and plazas.
After we walked around the elliptical Avenida Amsterdam, we stopped for a happy hour at Butcher & Sons. We relaxed to songs “Silbo” by Féloche and “All That is You” by Me and My Friends. Mike got two tequila shots for the price of one, with salt and lime 🍋. I had to remind him how to do the salt on the back of the hand, a sip of tequila and the lime in the mouth. I had a Mr. Tambourine: Hendrick’s gin, cucumber slice, lemon twist, tonic water. I am such a sucker for drinks with cucumber in them!
Steps: 10,146; Miles 4.3. Weather Hi 70°, Lo 48°. Cloudy and rainy.
San Ángel
Thursday, February 20: Our last day in Mexico City, we went to the southern neighborhoods of the city, San Ángel & Coyoacán.
Templo del Carmen & Museo de El Carmen
Our first stop was Templo del Carmen, once a monastery and college built for the Discalced (Barefoot) Carmelites in 1615. The Aztec village of Tenanitla grew around it and became San Ángel. Today the church is an example of Herrerían-style architecture with its dome tiled in weathered Talavera and a golden baroque altar inside.
Museo de El Carmen was founded in 1938. It reopened as a museum in the well-preserved 17th-century grounds of the El Carmen monastery and college. The El Carmen Monastery College, originally for the Discalced Carmelites, provided for an entirely hermetic life and seclusion from society. The temple was dedicated to the Catholic saint, San Ángel Martir, for which the neighborhood of today was named.
The museum collection includes examples of Sacred Art. This includes Baroque altarpieces in the chapels, reliquaries, crypts, sculptures, paintings, and even the mummified bodies of some of the Carmelite friars. These were uncovered during the revolution by Zapatistas looking for buried treasure.
In the Sacristy, a golden and polychromic mudejar-mannerist inspired ceiling is crowned with a work by colonial artist and Mexican master Cristóbal de Villalpando. He faithfully depicts the origins of the order.
The Carmelite Orchard had up to 30,000 specimens of fruit trees, highlighting pear trees, peaches, olive trees, and apple trees. A small portion of the land was for vegetables for the friars. There was also a pond to provide fish and frogs, to grow flowers and to grow medicinal plants for the temple, the oratory and the school pharmacy.
The entire area was protected by a stone wall about five meters high to protect the enclosure. In the end, the pear trees from the orchard brought the most fame and profits to the College.
For the Carmelites it was also a place of meditation and reflection, as well as the basis of their economy. The entrance to its famous Pear Shop was on the corner of the Monasterio alley and the Plazuela del Carmen Street and its famous products were sold there. Today the garden is a space for enjoyment, education and recreation with cultural activities.
We also found a modern exhibit of different dance forms found in Mexico.
Beneath the main building, the heavily decorated Mortuary Chapel and a vaulted underground hall hides the crypts of order members and benefactors.
San Ángel
We loved the colorful neighborhood of San Ángel. We even found a cute shop where I bought a Mexican poncho and bracelet.
We strolled through the leafy and colorful streets of San Ángel to the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo.
Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo and husband Diego Rivera called this place home from 1934 to 1940, after a three-year stint in the USA.
The most interesting is Rivera’s abode. His studio preserves his art tools, with brushes laid out and jars stained with colored waterlines. Rivera produced 3000 art pieces here until his death in 1957.
Now only giant papier-mâché figures that Rivera (and Kahlo) collected inhabit Rivera’s high-ceilinged studio.
The now-museum, Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, was designed by the couple’s friend, architect and painter Juan O’Gorman. Frida, Diego and O’Gorman each had their own separate house: Frida’s (the blue one) and O’Gorman’s have been cleared for temporary exhibits.
The houses are linked by a walkway, visually reflecting their joined but separate lives.
It was here that Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted two works that established her true artistry: Lo Que el Agua Me Dió (depicting her whole life in a bathtub) and El Difunto Dimas (of a deceased child).
Frida returned alone to her Coyoacán home in 1941 and remained there until her death in 1954.
Maque Café
After visiting the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, and before going to Coyoacán, we stopped into the adorable Maque Café, where we enjoyed a delicious lunch. I had wanted to try a mole dish and so ordered Enmoladas: Mole de la casa, pollo, crema y queso. It was scrumptious!
I didn’t know exactly what made an enmolada different from an enchilada. From all appearances they seemed alike. But Mike did a little research and found an enchilada is a taco prepared with a tortilla that has been previously soaked in a hot-pepper (chile) tomato sauce; an enmolada is a taco prepared with a tortilla that has been previously soaked in “mole.” Mole is a sauce that goes back to the Aztecs and is prepared with hot pepper and chocolate.
Mike ordered two Empanadas, acompañada de ensalada: Jamón con queso & Espinacas con queso. We shared one but took home the spinach empañada, only to forget to take it out of our refrigerator when we left Mexico City on Friday morning. 😱😓😥😰
Yet another pleasant dining experience in Mexico City.
Coyoacán: Museo Casa de León Trotsky
I had read a book, In the Casa Azul: A Novel of Revolution and Betrayal by Meaghan Delahunt, before coming to Mexico. The novel told, in a rather disjointed fashion, the story of León Trotsky and his exile in Mexico. Thus, I was interested in seeing the Museo Casa de León Trotsky in Coyoacán.
Having come second to Stalin in the power struggle in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was expelled in 1929 and condemned to death in absentia. In 1937 he found refuge in Mexico. No other countries would accept him. Trotsky and his wife Natalia lived briefly in Frida Kahlo’s Blue House, but after falling out with Kahlo (following an affair) and Rivera they moved nearby.
According to Ted Grant, in Russia: From Revolution to Counter-Revolution (published January 1, 1997):
In the whole history of the world labor movement, there was nothing similar to the persecution suffered by Trotsky and his followers. Trotsky’s entire family was wiped out, except for his grandchildren: Sieva Volkov, who now lives in Mexico, Alexandra Moglina, who died in Moscow in 1989, and Yulia Sedova (Juliia Sergeevna Rubinshtein), who now lives in the United States.
In fact Sieva Volkov died on June 17, 2023 in Mexico. He was 97. Volkov was the last surviving witness of the murder of his grandfather in 1940. I couldn’t find whether Yulia Sedova is still alive today, but it is doubtful she is.
Memorabilia is displayed in buildings off the patio, where a tomb engraved with a hammer and sickle contains Trotsky’s ashes. Bullet holes remain in the bedroom, the markings of an earlier failed assassination attempt in which Trotsky’s grandson, Sieva Volkov, was shot in the leg.
The house and grounds are quite lovely with abundant tropical vegetation and flowering bushes.
The Trotsky furnishings in the house remain virtually untouched.
The photos below show the room in which Trotsky worked tenaciously for at least ten hours each day. This was also the scene of this Russian revolutionary’s final fight with his assassin: a Catalan named Ramon Mercader del Rio, one of Stalin’s agents, who on August 20, 1940, gave Trotsky a mortal blow in the head with an ice axe.
The table is covered with books that belonged to Leon Trotsky, who, in his last months of life, was working on the manuscript which would reveal the hidden side of the Stalinist government: Stalin’s biography, which he left unfinished.
Next to the table can be seen the Edison Dictating Machine dictaphone, where Trotsky used to record his work in wax cylinders like the ones that are on the table. On the left side of the desk is the bookcase where dictionaries and reference book were kept.
On the north wall is the largest bookcase, which contains the main collection of Trotsky’s library: several of his works, some of Lenin’s works, essays by Marx and Engels and 86 volumes of the Brockhaus and Efron Russian Encyclopaedia, among many other works in different languages.
In the corner is the bed where Trotsky used to rest for a few minutes during work days. One of the main worries Trotsky had about himself during his last years was the high blood pressure that he suffered from, and which caused him to have strong headaches which forced him to stop working to seek relief. Testimonies of this worry appear in his last letters and in the will that he wrote in this house.
In the museum, we studied mug shots of Ramón Mercader, a photo of the ice axe used to kill Trotsky, Trotsky in the hospital (surprisingly he didn’t die right away and was lucid enough to tell those around him to get his grandson out of the room), & Trotsky’s funeral procession.
We found a small display about Lenin in the museum before leaving. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870 – 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. As the founder and leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin led the October Revolution which established the world’s first socialist state. His government won the Russian Civil War and created a one-party state under the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism (Wikipedia: Vladimir Lenin).
One of the main reasons people come to Coyoacan is to visit the Museo Frida Kahlo. Sadly, I waited until we arrived in Mexico City to buy my tickets, and found, much to my disappointment, that tickets were sold out through mid-March. That left me no choice but to return one day to Mexico City, which I happily hope to do.
La Romita
We got another Uber ride from Coyoacán to La Romita, a small colorful plaza in the midst of Roma Norte. We wandered around admiring the colorful murals, the hole-in-the-wall Tortillería, and the white Rectoría de San Francisco Javier church. Then we ambled a number of blocks back to our apartment in Roma Norte, stopping for beers at a little outdoor cafe, Chico Julio.
La Chicha Roma
Finally, we finished up our 6th & final night in Mexico City by returning to one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants, La Chicha Roma, where we had wrapped jalapeño chilies in ham and stuffed squash blossoms to the tune of “Petit nez” by King Doudou & Triplego. Yummy!
Steps: 14,028; Miles: 5.95. Weather Hi 69°, Lo 47°. Partly cloudy.
On Friday morning the 21st, we would pick up a rental car at the airport and drive 4 1/2 hours to Guanajuato.
~ wander.essence ~ 
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