I must once again wax poetic about Noche de Museos here in Mexico City. Like lots of similar programs around the world, it’s a monthly event when museums around the city stay open late, offer free or discounted entry, guided tours, and often program special musical or artistic shows. For me there is something so satisfying about staying at a museum past 9 o’clock or listening to a rock band while appreciating contemporary art.
This last Wednesday, when I hit the Museo Universitario del Chopo, I really had no idea what I was in for. All I’ve ever known of El Chopo is its infamous El Chopo Sunday market (named for the museum, where it began) where the heavies, freaks and black-clad rockers hang out, buying and selling cds and talking about their piercings.
Turns out there is much more to the place than that.
An Alternative Past
The Chopo museum looks more like a cathedral than a museum. An Art Nouveau glass and steel structure reminiscent of Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, the building was shipped in pieces from Germany and arrived by train at the nearby Buenavista station. Originally meant as an exhibition space for industrial art and design, it ended up serving as the city’s Natural History museum from 1913 to 1964 — when the building’s deteriorating condition caused its collection to be distributed among the Natural History Museum in Chapultepec, the Geology Museum and various institutes of the UNAM.
They started repairing the building in the mid-seventies as an artistic and cultural space, particularly focused on the work of young, emerging artists. In 1980s the Chopo Market began, originally as a place for music lovers to trade lps, and they hosted the first Gay Culture week in 1987 (which was an annual event for 15 years).
The Tradition Continues
Their latest show? Sex, Drugs and RocknRoll: Art and Culture of the Mexican Masses from 1963-1971.
While Sex, Drugs and RocknRoll is full of the drug-induced short films, drug-induced art and drug-induced music of the 60s in Mexico, not all the current exhibits are quite so rowdy. The Return of the Dinosaur by Erick Meyenberg and Liminal Animal by Mariana Magdaleno are shout-outs to the building’s past — fossil displays, old taxonomy books and freakish looking baby pigs floating in formaldehyde. Liminal Animal also includes these incredible images of creatures and insects drawn on the blank, towering walls with scientific precision.
Each exhibit inhabits its own little corner of El Chopo’s 
expansive warehouse-style space. Upstairs there’s a cafe and last Wednesday a local rock band jammed out the El Chopo soundtrack.
I probably wouldn’t have gone and seen any of this if it weren’t for Noche de Museos, which lists all the participating museums on their website, divided into areas of the city. So I just wanted to say that this program rocks – especially at El Chopo.
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