Slim museum

The world's richest man Carlos Slim inaugurated a massive museum in Mexico City on Tuesday to house his eclectic collection of art ranging from pre-Hispanic pieces to sculptures by French masters. Located in the heart of one of the capital's poshest residential areas, the Soumaya museum -- named after Slim's late wife -- will host some 60,000 pieces in six exhibit rooms, making it one of the biggest in Latin America. The museum will be home to one of the world's most important collections of Auguste Rodin's sculptures and also prominently displays works by Mexican muralists Rufino Tamayo and Diego Rivera. Slim plans to build a huge development anchored by the museum that will include offices, apartments and shops with a price tag of $750 million for the first phase of construction.

Quite a fascinating story. Carlos Slim is reported to have a greater wealth than Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, though of course that is all dependent on market value, which is volatile. Nonetheless, he's rich, very rich. And this is a development that surprises me: I did not see him having this interest. I recall reading a story several years ago, in which he complained of his children running up a $500 monthly phone bill, which struck as a bunch of mierda. He is a ruthless businessman who has magnificent connections, and has exploited such to gain a foothold in key industries; he bought Telmex for centavos on the peso, and rode that wave to fabulous wealth.


Nonetheless, for him to open up this museum is impressive. Sure, it's a public relations stunt. Still, his museum will not be charging admission. Two weekends ago we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the admission charge was $20 a person.

Tales from the field hit the road

As the Mexican-immigrant workers called braceros age, a touring exhibit tells their stories

Slideshow

SAN JOSE, Calif.—During World War II, facing a national labor shortage, the U.S. government turned to Mexico. It recruited about two million Mexican laborers to work on farms on in 29 U.S. states, helping to plant crops and pick cotton. The workers were known as braceros, a term derived from the Spanish word for "arm." Many of the braceros settled in the U.S., marrying and raising families. Now in their 70s and 80s, they are gradually dying off—advocates estimate that more than half of all braceros have passed away—and few Americans know their stories.

To ensure that those memories remain alive, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and a consortium of universities embarked five years ago on a project to record the oral histories of braceros, conducting interviews with surviving members of the program around the country. Nearly 1,000 interviews have been digitally recorded and uploaded onto a website, www.braceroarchive.org. An exhibit called "Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942-1964," based on the interviews and featuring documents, photographs and artifacts from that period, is now touring the U.S. It will open at the Museo Alameda in San Antonio later this month.

Art-Museum Trash Talk

---

January 29, 2010, 2:14 pm

Super Bowl Wager Provokes Art-Museum Trash Talk

It’s not only mayors and inveterate gamblers who place bets on the Super Bowl — art museums do, too. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art have placed a friendly wager on the outcome of the big game on Feb. 7: if the New Orleans Saints win, the Indianapolis museum will send “The Fifth Plague of Egypt” — that is, the landscape from its collection painted by J.M.W. Turner in 1800 — to the New Orleans museum, which gets to hang it for three months. If the Indianapolis Colts prevail, the New Orleans institution will send the painting “Ideal View of Tivoli,” a 1644 work by Claude Lorrain, to Indianapolis for three months. The Times-Picayune said the bet was instigated by Tyler Green, who writes the Modern Art Notes blog for artsjournal.com, and who helped egg on some tongue-in-cheek trash talk between the museums’ directors. When John Bullard, the New Orleans museum director, offered to wager a valuable Renoir, his Indianapolis counterpart, Maxwell Anderson, dismissed it as a “sentimental blancmange”; Mr. Bullard replied: “I am amused that Renoir is too sweet for Indianapolis. Does this mean that those Indiana corn farmers have simpler tastes?”