Franz Mayer Museum
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| Established | 1986 |
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| Location | Av Hidalgo 45. Centro Histórico 06300, México, D.F., México |
| Director | Lic. Hector Rivero Borrell Miranda |
| Website | www.franzmayer.org.mx |
The Franz Mayer Museum (Spanish: Museo Franz Mayer), in Mexico City, is one of Latin America's best known museums. It holds Mexico's largest decorative art collection and it also hosts temporal exhibits in the fields of design and photography.
The collection shows items from different regions, materials and styles ranging from the XVIth Century to our days, primarily from Mexico, Europe and the Far East. The most important genres in it are: silverware, ceramics, furniture, textiles, sculpture and painting.
The building currently occupied by the museum is a place full of history.
Four centuries it was used as a hospital. In fact, it was the first one the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God built in the Americas.
The cloister is, owing to its beauty, one of the highlights of the Museum. It hosts temporal exhibits and through it one can access three rooms decorated to resemble a dining room, a cabinet and a chapel from the times of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
The upper cloister features the public library, where several items are on display. It holds over 14 000 books, many of them rare and antique, as well as historical documents and over 800 editions of Don Quixote of La Mancha.
The museum offers guided tours, courses, lectures, concerts, shows, children workshops and special activities for the affiliate members.
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[edit] The building
The building now occupied by the Franz Mayer Museum has a long history. For four centuries it functioned as a hospital. Over the last forty years it has undergone diverse modifications that have altered its architectural style, in order to grant it new functions. In the 1980's, interest grew in renovating the building and converting it into a museum.
In 1582, Doctor Pedro Lopez, the first doctor to graduate from the Royal Pontifical University of Mexico, founded a hospital in this building that had until then been used to weigh flour. The hospital attended to blacks, mulattos, impoverished Spaniards and the poor, including orphans. It was called the Hospital for the Helpless, which included a church dedicated to the Three Kings. At the founder's death in 1597, the hospital passed to his son, José Lopez, who fought to keep it open with the aid of the Dominicans.
In 1598, the Dominican Friar Fernando Alonso travelled to Spain to seek support for the hospital, and thanks to his efforts, in 1599 King Phillip III began to sponsor it.
In 1604, the Brothers of the Order of Saint John of God installed themselves in the building, which became the Order's first hospital in the Americas, and whose fame grew rapidly. In 1620 a new era began for the hospital, with the construction of a church, hospital and a convent. The church's main altarpiece was inaugurated in 1650 and the infirmaries were completed in 1673.
The seat of the novitiate was inaugurated next to the hospital, where the brothers were trained for the treatment of the sick and the foundation of other hospitals. In the more than 200 years that the brotherhood occupied the convent and hospital here, land concessions were given, constant extensions were constructed and diverse architectural modifications were made.
On March 10, 1766 a terrible fire damaged the hospital complex and the tragedy was registered in a pamphlet. On March 8, 1800, an earthquake destroyed part of the complex, but thirteen years later it had been completely reconstructed.
The Spanish Courts, gathered in Cadiz, promulgated the decree to suppress the hospital orders and in 1821 the brotherhood abandoned the building. By 1826, the few sick people who remained in the hospital were transferred to the San Andres Hospital. In 1830, the nuns of the Teaching of the Indies used the building to found their school, and occupied it until 1834. The Sisters of Charity occupied the building in March 1845 and managed it until 1873. In 1865, during the empire of Maximilian of Habsburg, the establishment was used to care for sick prostitutes. By 1875 the Public Benefits Office had taken charge of the building, under the name of the Morelos Hospital.
In 1914, the hospital's management transferred to the Junta of Catholic Ladies and a children's hospital was established, a dormitory for paper workers, an asylum for beggars and a “blood hospital.” In 1937, the building, then known as the “Women's Hospital,” was declared a National Heritage site. In 1968, it was used as an exhibition centre for handcrafts, during the Olympic Games. It sustained its role as a handcrafts centre in a state of dereliction and illegal occupation.
In 1981, the Human Settlements and Public Works Ministry (SAHOP) granted the occupation of the building to the Franz Mayer Cultural Trusteeship, managed by the Bank of Mexico, for the installation of a museum to house the collection of Franz Mayer. That same year the restoration and adaptation of the building began. On 17 June 1986, the Franz Mayer Museum was opened to the public.
[edit] The collection
The Franz Mayer Museum collection consists of works of decorative art as well as sculpture and painting from Mexico, Europe and Asia dating from the 16th to the 19th century.
Other artistic materials used in artworks within the collection include ironwork, feather work, lacquer work, tortoiseshell, ivory, patents of nobility, print, glasswork and enamels.
Decorative art is an expression of the culture that produced it and informs us of a period's styles, fashions, changes in ornamentation, manufacturing processes and the artisans that took part in its creation.
[edit] Ceramics
The ceramics collection, formed by 1,628 pieces and about 10,000 tiles, is the most extensive and diverse of the different genres that make up the whole Franz Mayer collection.
The most important set in terms of number of pieces is the Mexican majolica, in particular the one known as talavera from Puebla. It is formed by all kinds of utilitarian objects, for personal hygiene, table service — plates, bowls, and soup tureen — religious celebrations in addition to the merely ornamental objects such as sculptures and tiles. Most of these pieces are decorated in blue on a white background with ornamental motifs, which show the influence of the pieces of chinaware brought to Mexico by the Manila Galleon from the last quarter of the 16th Century onwards.
The ceramics collection also includes some examples of Spanish crockery of metallic glare from Manises, Catalonia, and Aragón and tin-enamel crockery from Talavera de la Reina, Alcora and Seville. It also contains a vast range of objects of exported chinaware, as well as Dutch ceramics in blue and white from Delft. Pieces made using the printing technique or transfer printing such as some English, Dutch, and Mexican creations, are an example of the crockery from the 19th Century.
[edit] Silverware
Formed by a little more than 1,290 pieces from the 15th to the 19th centuries, the silverware collection of the Franz Mayer Museum has been recognized as one of the most important collections in Mexico.
Every piece shows the skilled craftsmanship in forging, casting and the different ways of using repoussé work, chiselling, graffito, and filigree. As well as silver work incrusted with precious and semi precious stones, in addition to enamels and other metals, such as gold.
Most objects from the collection were used in Catholic liturgies and much of their survival is due to the care given to them, as they are considered sacred. This is the case of censers, chalices, lamps, candlesticks, ciboriums, processional crosses, tabernacles, and other objects related to religious celebrations.
Another part of the collection includes civil silver. Among some examples are small golden cigarette cases with precious stones, cutlery, plates and trays, utensils we still use today.
[edit] Furniture
The Furniture Collection in the Franz Mayer Museum is one of the richest in Mexico. Most of the items date from the Viceroyalty of New Spain but there are pieces from Germany, Holland, Spain, France, China, The Philippines, and of Indo-Portuguese origins. This range helps to show the vast complexity of the commerce and trade that took place in New Spain between the XVth and the XIXth Centuries. It also displays the evolution of fashion and taste in furnishing.
[edit] Sculpture
The collection holds a wide variety of devotional sculpture, mainly from New Spain. Likewise, it features items made of ivory, alabaster, stone and wood, particularly in the technique known as Estofado.
[edit] Painting
[edit] European painting
The Museo Franz Mayer is one of the few places in Mexico where European painting -the collection includes works dating back to the 14th Century- and Mexican painting can be seen together. The evolution of techniques can be seen, as can the conformation and representation of the individual in his geographical and social surroundings.
The Spanish collection features works from the 14th to 20th centuries, including important paintings by José de Ribera “El Españoleto”, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Ignacio Zuloaga among others, while Italians such as Lorenzo Lotto and Alessandro Allori “El Bronzino” also stand out. Artists such as Jacob Grimmer and Bartholomeus Bruyn represent work from northern Europe.
Flemish and Dutch works cap the European collection with handsome and valuable examples of hunting scenes, banquets, and scenes depicting daily life. They include portraits as well as religious scenes with an evident delight in the representation of nature. A canvas displaying a remarkable delicacy is attributed to the late 17th century Dutch painter Frans van Mieris.
[edit] Mexican painting
Mexican painting is represented by several colonial pieces, including several brilliantly executed religious painting by such prominent artists as Juan Correa, Miguel Cabrera, Juan and Nicolas Rodriguez Juarez and others. From the 16th to the 18th Century, Mexican painting was almost entirely religious and played an important didactic role. The immense artistic production of the colonial period was due to the dominant role that religion played in the daily life of our ancestors.
The collection also includes extraordinary examples of secular art such as a portrait of well-known figures from 18th Century, elegantly dressed in the fashion of the time. Important paintings by artists who travelled to México in the 19th Century and who wished to express the fascination they felt on discovering Mexican landscapes are also included. In the late 19th and 20th Centuries are represented in a landscape by José Maria Velasco, and an early painting by Diego Rivera entitled El Paseo de los Melancólicos.
[edit] Textiles
Of particular beauty is the collection of shawls and serapes. Tapestries, rugs and liturgical textiles, as well as everyday use textiles are also on exhibit.
[edit] Franz Mayer
Born in 1882, in Mannheim, Germany, Franz Mayer arrived in Mexico in 1905. He moved into the financial world at the age of 23 and by around 1908 he had already enrolled as an agent of an independent stock exchange, thus beginning a promising career.
During the Mexican Revolution, he left the country and went back to the United States, where he lived for two years, and returned to Mexico in 1913. In 1920, he married Maria Antonieta de la Macorra and became a widower a few years later having had no offspring. He became a Mexican citizen on 29 December 1933.
From the 1950s, Franz Mayer had conceived the idea of donating his collection to Mexico (link to Franz Mayer collector). Finally, in 1963 he set up a trust fund, the Bank of Mexico was chosen as the fiduciary for the establishment of an art museum in Mexico City. At the same time a sponsor was found among the people closest to him. According to the wishes of Franz Mayer, the contract established that the trusteeship would create a library, organize exhibitions, competitions and conferences.
Franz Mayer died in 1975 and donated his collection to Mexico. The museum carrying his name was opened in 1986 in the former flour-weighing building, renovated in order to house this collection.
