Welcome to the first in a new series of Guest Posts from museum lovers around the world! Each post is like a mini-tour with an expert on a museum topic they’re excited about. So let’s get to know our guide:
Meet Caitlin McQuade
Guest poster Caitlin McQuade has worked in U.S. museums for over 30 years as an exhibit and interpretation planner. She got to spend two months in Puebla, Mexico in 2019, learning Spanish and visiting the city’s many museums. Visit her blog and say hello!
Puebla, Mexico, has a baroque heart. Built by Spanish colonists, the city’s historic facades pulse and swirl with ornament. Its well-preserved collection of 16th-18th century architecture earned the city UNESCO’s World Heritage label. And out in a new suburb of the city, a remarkable museum describes the global context for the city’s historic center.
The International Museum of the Baroque interprets the style in exhibits and in the building’s design. Architect Toyo Ito lifted the Baroque idea of asymmetric curves and applied it to a contemporary plan. Curled concrete slabs swoop and tilt around the exterior. The walls inside echo this motion and rise to 20 feet (6.5 meters) high.
Photo: Christian González Verón.
It all makes a grand setting for a grand story: the Baroque battle against restraint and reform in all the arts, across continents, for a century and a half. The Museum’s planners gathered or reproduced paintings and sculpture, religious objects, decorative arts and costumes, scientific instruments—even a ceiling!—from Europe and the Americas. In eight permanent galleries, these things demonstrate essential qualities of the Baroque: swirling motion; contrasts of light and dark; theatricality.
The exhibit planners made liberal use of digital technology. Multi-touch monitors swarm with examples of paintings from the period, and listening stations offer selections from Baroque composers.
Exhibit text (always in both Spanish and English) acknowledges that European military conquest funded and spread the Baroque style. But the dire consequences to conquered people and their cultures do not appear in the Museum. The galleries effectively celebrate the period’s beauty and spectacle.
After the dramatically lit galleries, there’s refreshment in the bright and elegant restaurant, with views onto the (of course!) swirling pool in an interior courtyard. And, on returning Puebla’s center, the city feels both more historic and more contemporary: for better or worse, globalism isn’t such a new thing, after all.
How about this take on the Baroque and the modern? Share your thoughts in the comments section below or via the Contact page!
All photos kindly provided by Caitlin McQuade.