La Jornada: With a community party, the Dolores Olmedo Museum will reopen tomorrow

After being closed for more than six years, the Dolores Olmedo Museum, in La Noria, will reopen its doors to the public tomorrow, amidst great joy from the neighbors, who consider it “the town’s cultural heritage” and from art lovers.

Upon its reopening, attendees will observe that the expansion of the exhibition spaces is divided into four sections. One recreates the atmosphere of the house in which the businesswoman and collector Dolores Olmedo Patiño (1908-2002) lived, while addressing her relationship with the painter Diego Rivera (1886-1957), with whom she maintained a strong friendship, beyond patronage.

In the section dedicated to Rivera, 98 works are exhibited that represent all the phases that the artist went through throughout his career, from his first stay in Europe to his last year of life, which he spent in Doña Lola’s house in Acapulco. The earliest work is a drawing that Diego made at the age of 10 for his mother, María Barrientos.

The museum has a collection of 148 pieces by the Guanajuato native, who had given his friend a list of the works that she should acquire for her collection and the creation of the venue. This area also includes samples of the businesswoman’s archaeological collection of 600 pieces.

The third section of the tour is dressed in the work of Frida Kahlo, of which the museum has 27 examples. The Dolores Olmedo houses the largest known collection of works by Kahlo and Diego. The businesswoman and the painter were not close; Rivera even asked him to acquire his wife’s paintings.

According to information provided by the venue, the work owned by Frida was acquired in “a single purchase”, that is, the collection of the engineer Murillo Safa. It includes widely known paintings such as Hospital Henry Ford (1932), A few little picks (1935), The late Dimas (1937), My nana and me (1937), Hopeless (1945) y The broken column (1944).

Olmedo was interviewed by Elena Poniatowska on the occasion of the museum’s inauguration in 1994. Excerpts from these conversations illustrate her thoughts.

In the section dedicated to Frida, Doña Lola recognized at that time: “30 years ago I became Frida’s collector… thanks to that she is known in Mexico and in the world, because since 1977 I have lent her paintings to exhibitions around the world.”

The last section of the complex is dedicated to Olmedo’s collection of popular art, which amounts to a thousand pieces. Start with an installation related to The ritual of the ball.

In the tour for the press, led by those in charge of the museum’s social relations area, it was explained that the museography has been designed so that the public has access to the “atmosphere” in which the collector lived.

“There is no curatorship as such, since this was her home. The museum team did not integrate external pieces; they only arranged the space to receive the public. The curator was Dolores Olmedo and these are the objects she collected throughout her life and her travels. There is no contemporary curatorship. The only thing we did was open spaces for circulation,” they noted.

A relevant aspect of the museum is its gardens and the fauna that inhabits them, such as the hundred peacocks whose squawks echo the atmosphere. There are also xoloitzcuintles dogs and geese. In this regard, Mrs. Lola expressed in the talk with Poniatowska: “every morning I go for a walk at six. I walk through the entire garden, I walk more than 5 kilometers. Look at the size of the garden that I have been increasing by purchasing the surrounding land.

“I started with 15 thousand square meters. Personally, I watch over the gardeners and inspect the condition of the trees; I see the hydrangeas, I order the grafting of the fruit trees, I ask them to climb this or that vine, to tie up this or that bougainvillea.”

Representatives of the Citizen Collective We Defend the Dolores Olmedo Museum came to the doors of the premises to show their joy because “it is not leaving Xochimilco and it will be reopened with its entire collection.”

Juan González Romero, on behalf of the group’s committee, recalled that on February 21, “the inhabitants of the mayor’s office issued the declaration of the museum as cultural heritage of the original towns, communities and neighborhoods of Xochimilco.”

Now they are seeking that the Government of Mexico City issue the declaration of the Dolores Olmedo Museum in La Noria as cultural heritage of Xochimilco. They announced a community party for tomorrow, with music and dancing at the museum gate.