Museography and design of the Lázaro Cárdenas Presidential House Museum awarded

Since its inauguration, on 19 October 2020, the Lázaro Cárdenas Presidential House Museum, a space that evokes the life and legacy of who is considered the first president in contemporary Mexican history, has one of the most visited sites in the Los Pinos Cultural Complex, with about 350 participants per day, which rose to 500 in December.

Among those visits, there are some of special significance, for example that of a group of Yaquis who, after going through the 14 rooms that were in the residence of ‘Tata’ Cárdenas, left the museum in tears when they took the photos recognized, the words and desires of their ancestors in museography.

That experience, comments the specialists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), who was in charge of the historical screenplay, design and museography of the cultural venue, is proof that the chosen discourse had the best response: the emotional one, as people and even entire communities begin to identify with the elements exposed .

This work has received distinctions such as the honorable mention of the Miguel Covarrubias Prize for Museography and Museum Research, granted by the INAH 2021 Awards to a multidisciplinary team of historians, museographers and designers, consisting of Juan Manuel Garibay López, Salvador Rueda Smithers, Susana Avilés Aguirre, Alejandra Ruano Calva, Cecilia Llampallas Sosa, Alejandro Molina Álvarez and Julieta Rodríguez Medina.

“Receiving this award – said Juan Manuel Garibay, INAH national coordinator of museums and exhibitions – is a great honor for the team, it is to discover, express and share that a historic site has been reissued and museumed. can become, and you can talk about it in a pursuit of temporary occupations ”.

In a joint interview, the creative team took on the challenge of choosing what will be displayed in that mid-20th-century residence, after the Los Pinos residential area opened to all Mexicans in December 2018 by decree of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is.

Among the options to create an art gallery or museum dedicated to the presidents of Mexico, it was decided to dedicate the space to Lázaro Cárdenas, “in the first place, because it was a Cardenista decision to presidential residence of the Chapultepec Castle a The pine.

“Second, and even more important, because the figure of Cárdenas allowed us to build a 70-year window on the history of Mexico, from the Porfirian decline to the 1970s, with details about the biography of the character,” she explains. political program and how it defines the political calling of all presidents to follow “, pointed out the director of the National Museum of History,” Chapultepec Castle “, Salvador Rueda Smithers.

Approximately one year of continuous work was required for the investigation, the collection of materials with the support of institutions such as the Ministry of Public Education, the National Cinematheque and the Photography Archive Museum, and route planning. What happened, Alejandra Ruano, Cecilia Llampallas and Julieta Rodríguez recalled, in the context of virtually total incarceration that implied the first months of the health event coming from Covid-19.

So every image and video, the acoustic stations, the multisensory elements or with Mexican Sign Language for people with disabilities and the reproduction of original pieces like the president’s presidential sash, were studied and chosen so that the public knows Lázaro Cárdenas not only in his political facet , but also in its family and affective component.

An example of the above is the last element the visitor sees on the tour, a photo selected by Susana Avilés, director of the museum, in which General Cardenas from the side as you descend the slopes of ash and earth from the Paricutín volcano.

The idea of ​​this photo as the last point of the museum, Susana Avilés and Salvador Rueda concluded, is that while the public ended his visit after walking through the room dealing with what happened on October 19, 1970, when the general died, it is given to understand that Lázaro Cárdenas actually departed from earthly life that day, but that he did not stop traveling through history and walking the path.

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