Displaying items by tag: mexico city

Chinese art from the Guizhou province in southwest China is on display at San Ildefonso museum in Mexico City. Artists hope that this exhibit, entitled “Masterpieces,” will help bridge the cultural gap between China and Mexico. The works are from the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) and feature more than 151 folk art pieces, including masks, sculptures and paintings. This exhibition will run through February 19th, 2017.

Famed British architect Norman Foster and a son-in-law of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim were named Wednesday to design a sprawling, new $9.15 billion international airport for Mexico City.

The glass-roofed terminal -- shaped like an X reminiscent of the eagle's open wings in the Mexican flag -- will have six runways and serve 120 million passengers per year, four times the existing airport's capacity.

The new facility will be built next to the current Benito Juarez international airport, which has two terminals but struggles to accomodate the growing number of travelers in Latin America's second biggest economy.

Pedro Antonio Marcuello Guzman of Miami and Maria Martha Elisa Ornelas Lazo of Mexico City have pled guilty to selling a stolen Henri Matisse painting on Miami’s black market. The duo admitted to FBI agents that they knew the $3 million painting, Odalisque in Red Pants (1925), had been stolen before making a deal to sell it to an undercover officer who was part of a sting operation. The pair was arrested after the sale was made.

The painting has been missing from Venezuela’s Sofia Imber Contemporary Art Museum since approximately 2002 when it was swapped for a fake. Some speculate the switch went unnoticed for years. Even though Interpol, the FBI, and police in France and Spain have investigated the case, the details of the theft remain a mystery. However, Guzman and Lazo said in court that they were told museum employees hung the forgery in place of the original.

Although the painting has been recovered, it has not been returned to Venezuela. Guzman faces 10 years in prison for conspiracy to transport and sell stolen property, while Lazo faces five years. The pair is scheduled to be sentenced in January.

While Frida Kahlo is known for her bright and highly personal self-portraits, her role as a style icon is not to be dismissed. Most women of the 1930s embraced form-fitting dresses, coiffed hairdos, and dainty, pencil-thin eyebrows. Kahlo preferred to make appearances wearing ribbons, full skirts, bold jewelry, loose peasant blouses with vivid embroidery, and her signature untamed eyebrows.

A full collection from Kahlo’s wardrobe will go on display at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City beginning November 22nd. Sponsored by Vogue Mexico, Appearance Can Be Deceiving: The Dresses of Frida Kahlo will include jewelry, shoes, and clothes that had been locked away in the artist’s armoires for almost 50 years.

Smelling of cigarette smoke and perfume and stained from painting, Kahlo’s clothing served as an armor of sorts. Kahlo’s life was rife with pain, both emotional and physical. Polio left one of her legs thinner and weaker than the other, a bus accident maimed her when she was only 18, she suffered multiple miscarriages, and endured a tumultuous marriage with the Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera. Kahlo coped with all of these experiences in her painting as well as through her dress. Her long, full skirts covered her debilitated leg and her loose blouses covered the rigid corsets she wore for back pain.

When Kahlo died in 1954, Rivera ordered that her clothes be locked up for 15 years. After his death three years later, art collector Dolores Olmedo became the manager of his and Kahlo’s houses and refuses to allow access to Kahlo’s letters, clothes, jewelry, and photographs. They were not unlocked until Olmedo’s death in 2004.

Highlights from Appearances Can Be Deceiving include the white corset Kahlo wore in the self-portrait The Broken Column and an earring that was a gift from Pablo Picasso and was featured in a self-portrait from the 1940s. The mate has not been found. A Tehuana dress, named after Indian women of that region, was Kahlo’s signature piece of clothing. Worn with large gold earrings and flowers braided into her hair, the dress is featured in many self-portraits.