Snack Cakes: The Real Cultural Treasure

I’m midway through my second week in CDMX. I’ve got a pretty good routine down – getting to the gym, getting my post-gym tamale and atole, buying fruit from the same lady at the market, etc. That was the goal after all. My apartment continues to be lovely, and I’m really enjoying being in the area I’m in.

Over the past few days, I’ve been on a museum deep dive, exploring the big and small museums I haven’t visited on previous trips. I started things with a visit to the Museo Del Objeto Del Objeto (not a typo) which is just a few blocks away from my apartment. The name should be understood as “The Museum of the Purpose of the Object” – it’s a museum that focuses on the design and communication embodied in quotidian objects, dating back to the early 19th century. It was fun to see a lot of Mexican brands, especially from the mid-20th century.

On Friday, I took the afternoon off and took the bus down to the Anahuacalli Museum. Designed by Diego Rivera, it’s a stunning structure which houses a pre-Columbian art collection. The setting is incredibly peaceful – an oasis in the city.

From the Anahuacalli, I took the metro to the Zocalo (the city center). My goal was to try and find another full zip hoodie, because I only brought two. I struck out on that front (everyone here is into pullover hoodies, and who wants that?) but I had a lovely time wandering through the crowds. I ended up in the cafe on the top of the Sears store. Yes, Sears is still a thing here – 8 floors of clothing, housewares, motorcycles, car parts, and couches. The cafe overlooks the Palace of Fine Arts and was a lovely place to read and watch the sunset. On my way back to the subway, I came across a band rocking out in the park with a small crowd gathered around.

Saturday, I did some laundry, then made my way out to the Banamex Convention Center for an event related to CDMX Art Week. Getting there was a bit of a faff – I waited for a bus for ages, but it never came – apparently some protests had jammed up traffic in town, and the buses were all stranded. Finally I swallowed my pride and took an Uber, which still took ages in the traffic. The event was a mix of galleries and brand-sponsored spaces showing off artwork for purchase. While there were some neat pieces, most of them were very large and (one presumes) very spendy. Judging by the couture of most of the attendees, I don’t believe I was the target audience.

Since I didn’t want to sit in traffic again, I decided to walk to the Museo Soumaya, which was built by the foundation of Carlos Slim (one time richest person in the world). It’s a free museum, featuring a really broad set of art from pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art through old world masters and 20th century Mexican art. The layout of the museum is a bit reminiscent of the Guggenheim, with a long spiraling ramp taking you up through the six floors. There’s also currently a special exhibit with 1:1 scale recreations of the David and other works from Michelangelo, created by a robotics studio in Italy.

As I was making my way home from the Soumaya, I came across another Art Week event – a popup art fair of works exhibited by their artists. It was filled with fashionable people living glamorous lives, and seemed like a lovely place to hang out with a group of similarly fashionable friends. Lacking such friends, I made my way home through the Bosque Chapultepec. The real highlight was meeting some High Quality Dogs waiting for their owners outside the grocery store.

Sunday was … more museums! I went back to the Zocalo, since most of the museums are in the city center. I wanted to start the day with the museum of the Templo Mayor. The Templo Mayor is the major temple of the Mexica city of Tenochtitlan, which lies under modern Mexico City. The remains of the temple are next to the Catholic Church (weird coincidence eh) and were only discovered and seriously excavated starting in the mid 1970s. While much of the archaeological site is visible from street level, entering the museum lets you explore up close, and visit the collection of excavated objects.

Entering the museum turned out to be a little more complicated than expected – the normal entrance was blocked off due to a protest of some sort. The back way in wasn’t accessible either. After circling the whole area, I asked a cop and she explained that the way in was to go into the Cathedral, cut through the church service (it was Sunday morning after all) and then sneak out the side door. Shrug – ok!

This was definitely a highlight experience, and one I’ll need to return to. The museum is very well organized, with good translations and a stunning array of objects. There’s also plenty of attention paid to the stages of excavation and discovery at the site.

After the museum, I grabbed a quick snack at El Mayor, a rooftop cafe that Avidan had told us about years ago. Then it was on to the next museum, the Interactive Museum of Economics (MIDE). Truth be told, I mostly wanted to go because I was curious what such a museum would be all about, and I vaguely remember a tongue in cheek mention in The Economist years ago. The museum mostly caters to students, with great interactive exhibits about inflation, saving for retirement, avoiding credit card debt, and so on. It also has some good historical information about currency and central banking in Mexico, which was fun.

I took a brief detour to the recently relocated Mexican Museum of Design, but it’s more of a gathering space than a full featured museum, so I kept going to the Museum of Popular Art. This was an exciting experience in more ways than one. Right as I was entering the first gallery, alarms started sounding and everyone’s phone went crazy – earthquake! We all followed the evacuation routes to get out of the building, and the museum staff did a good job of keeping everyone together. The earthquake itself (5.7) was down south in the state of Oaxaca and we never actually felt it. After a few minutes, they let us go back inside.

The museum has a huge collection of folk art, textiles, and modern exhibitions. A lot of it reminded me of the Alebrijes exhibit on Raspberry Island in St. Paul this past summer. My favorite story was about the indigenous culture struggling to grasp the concept of the devil, instead representing him being teased and bullied by humanity.

Finally, we come to the real highlight of my museum overload. I had some meetings cancel this afternoon, and I decided to seize the opportunity to visit the Bimbo Museum. Bimbo is a global bakery company which was founded in Mexico in the early 20th century. In addition to sandwich bread and other staples, they make snack cakes like Gansitos and Pinguinos, which I love to buy back home. The museum only opened a few weeks ago, and has tons of great interactive exhibits about the production process and the history of the company. Each visitor gets a lanyard which magically triggers screens as you move around the museum. I appreciated that it also automatically configured the screens into English for me. And, best of all, they have a store – I loaded up on Bimbo merch. Somewhat hilariously, they also have a cafe, which only serves fancy artisanal baked goods.

Alright so, I know this was a bit of a dry post, just recapping all these museums. This one is mostly for my own memory! I promise I’ll come back soon with a post of Deep and Insightful Thoughts about the new role of globalism among Mark Carney’s “middle countries”. Or maybe I’ll just review snack cakes.

Oh, and lest you worry – my list of museums to visit still has plenty of entries.