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National Museum of Mexican Art - Citlalli Alaniz, Week 3

 Week 3 (July 15 - July 19)

This week was my third week as a summer camp youth mentor at the ImaginARTE Summer Camp in the National Museum of Mexican Art. This week's focus is all about assembling the camper's mini-museums by designing the walls, floors, and frames, as well as making sculptures to put in each museum. 

The week began with a tour with the museum's curator, Cesario, who gave us a tour of the Huasteca Women Exhibit - Goddess, Warriors, and Governors. The exhibit contains over 130 artifacts never before exhibited or published that highlights the several roles of some in the Mesoamerican civilization known as the Huasteca that is now present-day Veracruz, Hidalgo, Tamaulipas, and San Luis Potosí. Our main focus in this exhibit was observing the exhibit's design, positioning, and intentional colors, stands, and cases which contained and exhibited the Huasteca artifacts and a couple of excavated sculptures. 





We started the week off practicing gradients, depth, and perception by sketching on paper and drawing on Procreate, then transitioned to using air dry clay to incorporate what they learned and to have a center piece for their museums. As the week progressed they began decorating and assembling their mini-museums. 

Friday, the last day of the week, we asked the campers, "what is public art?" and "what is considered a mural?" After giving them a brief background, we took all of them outside and went on a mural tour of the neighborhood in Pilsen, Chicago. The campers strolled around Pilsen looking at the various murals on houses, garages, community houses, and local schools to conduct a cultural exploration of the community where they reside in. After finishing, we went back inside and reflected on our favorite murals and things we observed while on the tour. 




After discussing, they began drafting positive messages and ideas to make their own public art outside the museum. With chalk, they created their own art work on the sidewalk and displayed positive messages and drawings for the people of the community to see. 





Overall week 3 was pretty nice, I was able to learn a lot about the Huasteca culture which I was super happy about considering it encompasses San Luis Potosí which is where my family is from. It was great to be able to look back and learn about women in society back then and how they played important roles in every day life.  



  

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