Gayle Brennan Spencer – sending random thoughts to and from South Austin
The age of some of the colonial buildings in Oaxaca is difficult to comprehend.
While the project took decades to complete, brothers of the Dominican order began the construction of the Santo Domingo Church and its adjoining monastery in the 1570s. The monastery houses the Museum of Oaxacan Cultures, an extensive collection of pre-Hispanic artifacts, colonial religious sculpture and historical exhibits, while the walled grounds enclose the city’s Ethnobotanic Garden.
In the 1970s, artist Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) spent his own funds to lovingly restore an 18th-century building in his native city of Oaxaca to house his collection of pre-Hispanic art as a gift to his hometown.
The displays of the artifacts in the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art are unusual because they are grouped aesthetically and set against colors of the artist’s own choosing.
The remarkable faces crafted by native artists of Mexico stare back, some frightening looking but many laughing as at some unknown joke, possibly the photographer.
Easy to stumble into parades along the streets of Oaxaca, sometimes religious, sometimes protest marches you need to avoid and sometimes simply an exuberant wedding celebration….
Postcards from Barton Springs 