Editor’s Note: Guest writer Mark Alvarez offers his thoughts on the new exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts – Las Artes de México – celebrating more than 3,500 years of Mexican art, history, and culture. On loan from the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this exhibition will be on view in six of the UMFA’s first-floor galleries during the summer of 2010. The UMFA is located on The University of Utah campus. For more information, see here.

Image above: Jaguar Head, Maya, AD 300 to 900, earthenware, courtesy of the Gilcrease Museum.

In 2010, Mexico celebrates the bicentennial of its independence and the centennial of a revolution. The art and culture of Mexico and its people reach back further, thousands of years further.

Historian David McCullough has turned the phrase “gone, but not forgotten” into “not forgotten, not gone.” The ancient peoples of Mexico and the Americas are not gone.

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) celebrates more than 3,500 years of Mexican art, history and culture with the exhibitions “Las Artes de México”; “Pablo O’Higgins: Works on Paper”; “salt 1: Adriana Lara”; and “Community: eat, work, play.”

UMFA has a welcoming presentation. The explanatory material for Las Artes de México has been translated into Spanish. UMFA has also translated some of its website.

Greeting the visitor is a tree of life from Metepec, a town just south of Mexico City known for this tradition. Las Artes de México occupies six galleries running through “The Art of Ancient America,” “Religious Art of the Mesoamericas,” “After the Conquest,” “Cultural Traditions” and “Modernism in Mexico.”

Traveling through the exhibition, the visitor can find the Olmecs from 1500 BCE in jade carvings and relics for the traditional ballgame, the Mayas in a jaguar head, the Huichol in a vibrant yarn painting bursting with color and the familiar Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco, Rufino Tamayo and Raul Anguiano.

Image above: Pablo E. O’Higgins (1904-1983), Atardecer, (Twilight), 1974, hand-colored lithograph, collection of Phyllis and Russell Vetter.

Pablo O’Higgins is famous in Mexico. Though he is virtually unknown in Utah, Pablo O’Higgins was born Paul Higgins in 1904 in Salt Lake City. Paul was the son of the sentencing judge for Joe Hill, the famous labor organizer who was executed in Utah in 1915. In 1920, Paul Higgins moved to Mexico, changed his name and found work with Diego Rivera. O’Higgins’ work would celebrate the dignity of the common worker.

Image above: Adriana Lara (1978-), Installation (Seashells), 2008, mixed media, collection of Cesar Cervantes

Mexican art is not exclusively male. “salt” began this year to highlight contemporary art and emerging artists. UMFA honored Adriana Lara of Mexico City with the inaugural “salt” exhibition. Mexico City teems with art and experimentation.

Lara is described as a Mexican artist, yet she does not appear self-consciously so. In a public conversation Lara remarked that Mexican artists living abroad tend to produce art more Mexican for their references to familiar art and culture. The artist in Mexico perhaps feels less bound and more free to disconnect from history and tradition. Lara’s art challenges the observer to find the vitality, dynamism and relevance of contemporary art.

Image above: Lincoln Elementary School students, Community: Eat, Work, Play, 2010, painted mural, photo courtesy of the UMFA.

Youth from Lincoln Elementary School in Salt Lake City created the art for “Community: eat, work, play.” Eighty first graders and seventy sixth graders learned about Mexican art and the muralists. Local art was included in their study. These were encouraged to develop themes and ideas of their own. The first graders decided that glitter was important in art. “Community: eat, work, play” shows the importance of education, the influence of Mexican art on students and the creations of Utah children.

On May 15, UMFA offers a celebration of children’s work. Admission is free. All are invited to tour the exhibits from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and to participate in a family art event from 2 to 4 p.m.

Image above: Jose Clemente Orozco (1883 – 1949), Zapatistas, 1928, lithograph, courtesy of the Gilcrease Museum.