Our Neighbor to the South in Pictures

It's the end of the world as they know it

It was a double-dose of Mexican art today, as we toured 2 separate exhibitions in DC at institutions charged with promoting the history, culture, and people south of our border.

First, we looked at the show Mexico Through the Lens of National Geographic at The Mexican Cultural Institute.  The exhibit pulls together, for the 1st time, a selection of 132 photographs of Mexico from the National Geographic Society's archives. Mexico has been featured more than 150 times in the magazine (more than any other country) and many of the photos came from special issues devoted to Mexico, one in 1916 and the other 50 years later.

One of the more interesting pictures featured a young boy smeared with mud who was being decorated with jaguar markings as preparations to perform a tribal rain dance. What made the photo so intriguing as that the unseen marker was creating the boy's jaguar spots with a Coke bottle.

The second exhibition, currently on display at The Art Museum of America, was entitled Mundos Posibles (Possible Worlds). Here Mexican photographers used their pictures to delve, not into the real world, but into created worlds of the minds including myth, science fiction, and the apocalypse.

Travelers' Tip:
If you visit the Mexican Cultural Institute make sure to closely check out the murals which decorated the walls and staircases. Originally, the Mexican government wanted famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to handle the work,but he demurred, allowing one one of his best students to undertake the job.
If you visit