Mexico City. Dogs have always been a natural population of the Chapultepec Forest, and the surroundings of the Tamayo Museum of contemporary art is no exception.
Now, the venue has created a space that takes into account the “man’s best friend” and, of course, his owner, through the #arteyperros program that takes place on Sundays, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., until 8 of November. The first Sunday attracted almost 800 people.
It is a small room, implemented on one side of the museum, whose wall is made of glass and already had a door that gives access to the park. Paintings, photographs, and drawings the subject of dogs have been hung on the wall.
Humberto Moro, Tamayo’s artistic deputy director and curator of the program, states that on October 4, the first Sunday of #arteyperros, they only exhibited work belonging to the museum’s permanent collection.
The idea, however, is to increase the number of hanging pieces every week. On Sunday the 11th, two engravings by Tamayo and a drawing that served as a sketch for the oil painting Barking at the moon (1942), an oil painting by Víctor Vassarely, the mixed technique Dog (1976), by Andy Warhol, three drawings by Ryan Mrozowski, Perros perdidos, by the photographer Graciela Iturbide, and a photo by an unknown author of Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) with one of the pets he had.
Only one person and their dog enter at a time, and they have 10 minutes to visit.
For Moro, canines are part of the community of the Bosque de Chapultepec: “You just need to be in the museum, turn your gaze outward to realize it.”
The program seeks, in the first place, “to generate safe spaces given the contingency in which people can be in open places and continue visiting the museum. On the other hand, we pay attention to what happens around us ”.
Later, it turns out that the dog has been a “persistent motif in the history of art, present from the first notions of representation in cave paintings to contemporary art.” The project also takes into account the relevance that dogs had for Tamayo, not only physically since he had several canine pets, but he used them in his work to represent “the horrors of war.
“Around the 40s of the last century, Tamayo began to paint dogs as a way to reveal what he felt from the Second World War. It is a significant symbol in his work ”, comments Moro.
Additionally, in the museum’s collection, there are “iconic” works of dogs such as the above-mentioned Warhol piece. For Moro, putting together the program was a bit like “connecting the dots by doing things, which are almost obvious, clearer to everyone.”
In Los Perros de Tamayo, a text by Juan Carlos Pereda, the museum’s deputy director of collections recognizes that pets are part of families and Tamayo’s was no exception: “The artist loaded with international glories, recognized worldwide, a celebrity in the art world, whose work was analyzed by the world’s most renowned intellectuals and art historians, he spent part of his daily day in pampering Pili and Pepa, his two faithful companions.
In reality, Pili received care from Olga (his wife), while Rufino gave it to Pepa; two Maltese specimens with long hair that always looked clean and combed, as well as Joaquín, a dog rescued from the street, who lived with the ladies of the house.
“Since their transhumance between New York and Paris allowed them, the Tamayo have integrated one or more pets into their family environment, among these, the dogs were privileged. In the absence of children, animals occupied a special place in the lives and environment of the Tamayo. Before they had just married, when the couple settled in Mexico, they took care of a first dog that they called Mingo, then it was Roro, then a long pause, without them or others ”.
It should be remembered that to enter the enclosure, sanitary measures must be taken into account: such as the temperature, if it is higher than 37.4 ° the visitor must return home. The use of antibacterial gel at the entrance is essential. To enter, you must wear a mask and maintain a healthy recommended distance of 1.5 m.
#Arteyperros is organized by Humberto Moro, artistic deputy director and senior curator of the Tamayo Museum with the assistance of Felipe González.
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Source: inba.gob.mx, foodandpleasure.com, museotamayo.org