Qué Bonita: The Exhibit
The display was inspired by a variety of museum theories for best practices for display of cultural objects. Although the collection includes a few physical cultural objects, it was fully inspired by the culture and all of the objects within that culture. On the wall behind the work, the frames are set up in a salon-style of exhibiting work. The salon-style was established by The Royal Academies of Art in France and England in the late eighteenth century. These men held a monopoly on what ‘good’ art was. The wall style that is behind everything represents the colonial roots that led the Catholic Church to be in Mexico which created this beautiful culture. The first Catholic Cathedral in Mexico was originally the site for El Templo Mayor, a place of worship for the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. The site was dedicated to the gods Tlaloc, god of rain, and Huitzilopochtli, god of sun and war also known as the Turquoise prince. The jewelry made for the collection was symbolistic to many of the Aztec gods and goddesses. The tablespace that holds the jewelry is pushed against the wall to represent an altar of sorts again to honor the original culture. The flowers on that table and around the space shift the time period and are representative of marigolds that are used for Day of the Dead altars. This celebration is a blend of Mesoamerican, European, and Spanish culture, exactly like the Mexican Catholic culture.