Oaxaca at the Crossroads: Managing Memory, Negotiating Change

by Selma Holo

The role of museums in creating national and local cultural and political identities. This detailed examination focuses on the artists and museums of Oaxaca, a city and province celebrated worldwide by tourists, collectors, and art historians for its polished black pottery, colorful carvings of animals, fine textiles, world class museums and galleries, archaeology, and famous contemporary artists. Selma Holo looks in particular at how individuals and groups at national, regional, and local levels use museums to advance a particular view of history and identity. She clearly explains the way Mexico's pre-Columbian past has been represented, who has contested it, who holds the rights to Oaxaca's archaeological treasures, who has the authority to narrate the country's cultural history, who creates new museums and new mythologies about national and local identity, and many other intriguing subjects. 30 b/w illustrations.

284 pages, Hardcover

First published December 17, 2004

Reviews

[Larissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really interesting survey of modern Oaxacan culture, based on what appears to be an exhaustive series of interviews with artisans, community leaders, philanthropists, government officials, archaeologists, and artists. Holo clearly adores the region, and the book is relentlessly upbeat about the cultural initiatives it discusses, every one of which seems to be an empowering, dynamic, ultimately successful synthesis of modernity and tradition. Since Holo includes several examples of contention and conflict in Oaxaca's cultural spheres (frustration with the dominant role of Francisco Toledo in the modern art world, tension between archaeologists and local communities at Monte Alban, disagreements between Mexican and U.S. experts over how to restore a colonial altarpiece), it would be nice to see these shadings emphasized a little more, with increased attention to the impediments that might block an easy or satisfying resolution of such disputes. Nevertheless, the book is a great resource, and makes a strong case for the uniqueness, beauty and resiliency of Oaxacan culture.