Travel Deeper than this Year’s Blockbuster US Exhibits … Join Tia Stephanie in Mexico City for the Most In-depth Encounter with Diego and Frida.
(TRAVPR.COM) USA - April 6th, 2015 - This is the year of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. A historic exhibition, with 70 of the most passionate works by these iconic Mexican artists, opened on March 15 at the Detroit Institute of Art. Since February 26 and through May 31 an exhibition entitled Kahlo, Rivera, and Mexican Modern Art, is on view at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, FL. On May 16, the first solo exhibition of Frida Kahlo’s work to be seen in New York City in 25 years will open at the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx, and from October 31 to February 8, 2016, the Heard Museum in Phoenix will be the last USA venue for the world tour of Frida Kahlo – Her Photos.
The exhibitions are of course exciting, but what’s even more rewarding for art lovers is the chance to follow on the heels or enlighten themselves in advance of these State-side retrospectives by traveling to Mexico and itself. Fans of Mexico’s beloved art couple will delve into great depth on Tia Stephanie Tours’ eight-night “Diego and Frida in Mexico City” tour, August 8-16, 2015. Mexican cultural expert and Tia Stephanie Tours’ founder, Stephanie Schneiderman, her superior licensed guides, on-site archaeologists, art historians, curators, chefs, and other specialists, will immerse travelers in the lives of Diego and Frida in the context of Mexican art, architecture, history, politics, and cuisine. Says Stephanie, “We want art enthusiasts to see the historic exhibitions, such as Diego and Frida in Detroit at the Detroit Institute of Arts and Frida Kahlo's Garden at the New York Botanical Garden, but then further immerse themselves in Mexico itself.”
With Tia Stephanie, travelers will tour the National Palace to view Diego Rivera’s mural masterpiece The Epic of the Mexican People, where he depicted major events in Mexico’s history and the indigenous cultures of Mexico. They’ll explore Mexico’s pre-Hispanic site of Teotihuacan, including a rarely visited mural museum to learn about mural iconography and techniques of Mexico’s ancient civilizations. They’ll journey to the vibrant Coyoacan neighborhood to visit lively markets that Frida and Diego themselves frequented, as well as the Frida Kahlo Museum (known as the “Blue House”) and the Dolores Olmedo Museum, home to the largest collections of Diego and Frida pieces. They’ll enjoy a “trajinera” boat ride to the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco to discover ancient agriculture, which has been depicted in the artists’ works. They’ll have insightful experiences at: Chapultepec Castle, the National History Museum, the Museum of Modern Art of Mexico, the Rufino Tamayo Museum, and the world renowned National Museum of Anthropology. They’ll spend a day uncovering Mexico City’s astounding contemporary art tendencies on a crawl through the top galleries, including: Kurimanzutto, Galería OMR, and Proyectos Monclova, as well as specialized museums, such as the Jumex Museum and the Luis Barragán House and Studio, a UNESCO World Heritage site. (Barragán was the father of modern Mexican architecture).
The most notable cultural institution tour participants will visit is the Palace of Fine Arts. First impressions will be of the building itself, with its imposing Neo-Classical and Art Nouveau exterior and dramatic Art Deco interior, replete with embellishments representing indigenous plant and animal life and masks recalling pre-Hispanic traditions. Beyond this, however, on the first floor lobby and second floor balcony walls everyone will be awed by the museum’s crowing jewels, the socio-political murals of Mexico’s three great post-revolutionary painters: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Participants will compare and contrast these monumental works on their artistic materials and techniques, historical references, and worldview political statements, and they’ll learn the three portents of the muralist movement: Grand scale, Political Didacticism, and Public “Mexican” (not European) Iconography.
Tour participants will next visit San Ildefonso College, a former boarding then prep school turned museum and cultural center that is considered the birthplace of Mexican muralism as a movement. Here, Diego Rivera and his contemporary post-revolutionary “artistas” painted murals in the 1920s under then Secretary of Public Education José Vasconcelos, a strong proponent for education for the masses. Diego’s colossal wall messages were in reaction to Porfirio Díaz, the three-decade former dictator (1876-1911), who favored European artistic tendencies, and whose social policies supporting wealthy landowners, deprecated local farmers, precipitating the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920).
Finally, the group will spend a day in the southern reaches of the city, where they’ll encounter the surreal Anahuacalli Museum, designed by Diego Rivera himself to house his collection of Mesoamerican Art and Antiquities. Also in this region of the city, they’ll inspect the famed Bazaar Sabado (Saturday Art Market) and even Diego and Frida’s Studios!
This unparalleled cultural immersion into the life, art and context of two of Mexico’s greatest human artistic treasures includes eight breakfasts, seven lunches, and a dinner at Dulce Patria, where award-winning Chef Martha Ortiz will prepare a creative and festive multi-course Mexican meal featuring some of Frida and Diego’s favorite dishes. The eight-night trip cost is $2,685 per person double occupancy. Log onto www.tiastephanietours.com for more details and booking information.
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Tia Stephanie Tours is a boutique operator, based in Ann Arbor, MI, specializing in cultural tourism to Mexico and Colombia. The company has organized trips for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Textile Museum, the Toledo Art Museum, the Obsidian Arts Center, and Florida International University's Alumni Association. In April 2015, TST's Day of the Dead in Michoacan Tour was selected as a National Geographic Tour of a Lifetime.
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