"You cannot travel the path until you have become the path itself"
Prince Siddhartha Gautama

Bringing Places To Life  

Sun City’s Hot New Cultural Scene

To get the nickname sun city in sweltering Northern Mexico, you can imagine how hot Hermosillo, capital of the state of Sonora, is. But this desert metropolis has a burgeoning cultural scene, thanks to cash injections from the region’s wealthy cattle farmers, and the focal point is the stunning new Musas cultural/contemporary art centre just south of Plaza Zaragoza.

The set-piece installation of the impressive, airy new building is the vibrant VW in the entrance-way with a teetering ladder leeading from the car roof seemingly up into space: a reference perhaps to the car industry which might have made Hermosillo the affluent city it now is, but has been a somewhat precarious economic fallback of recent years.

But Musas, the modern mascot of a modern city, draws on far more than this for its inspirational art. The permanent collection draws upon Hermosillo past as well as present, with a focus on the region’s indigenous peoples, such as the Seri. There is also currently the moving Fin del Camino exhibition by Miguel Fernandez, which explores the idea of desert (surrounding Hermosillo on all sides) and space.

All in all, an impressive example of how a city can turn around its image, and its attractiveness to tourists, by the creation of a single museum.