Aguascalientes Museum, Art museum in Aguascalientes City, Mexico.
The Aguascalientes Museum occupies a neoclassical building of pink quarry stone built in 1903 and rebuilt by Refugio Reyes Rivas in 1914. Its facade resembles a Greek temple with fluted columns and a pediment. Inside, two courtyards have carved columns, three-point arches and central stone fountains; the first courtyard holds temporary exhibition rooms and the second three permanent rooms of Saturnino Herrán's work.
The building was constructed in 1903 as the Liceo de Niñas, a girls' school funded by donations including deputy José Bolado's salary, and rebuilt and enlarged by Refugio Reyes Rivas in 1914-1916. In 1915 it was renamed Escuela Normal del Estado para Señoritas. It became the Museo de Aguascalientes in October 1975 on the initiative of poet Víctor Sandoval, timed to the city's fourth centenary.
The museum is named after the city and state, and its collection centres on four artists from Aguascalientes: Saturnino Herrán, Jesús F. Contreras, Gabriel Fernández Ledesma and Francisco Díaz de León. Herrán is remembered by the phrase "the most Mexican of the painters". The front courtyard is used by local teenagers to paint, write poetry or gather, making it a spot tied to residents' self-expression.
The museum sits in the Centro Histórico of the state capital, with the entrance on the neoclassical facade. Inside, seven rooms around the first courtyard hold temporary and semi-permanent shows, while three rooms off the second courtyard hold the Saturnino Herrán collection. Sculptures stand in the corridors and gardens, and the Dr. Jesús Díaz de León room hosts concerts and lectures.
The museum holds a plastic-fibre reproduction of Jesús F. Contreras's sculpture Malgre Tout; the original is in the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City. The work was awarded in Paris, and its title refers to the amputation of the artist's right arm after an infection before he finished the piece.
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