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Why Travel With Us: Help sustain traditions.
- We know the culture! This is our land! We are locally owned and operated.
- Eric Chavez Santiago is tri-lingual --Spanish, English, Zapotec.
- Eric was founding director of education, Museo Textil de Oaxaca + folk art expert
- Norma Schafer has lived in Oaxaca since 2005.
- Norma is a seasoned university educator.
- We have deep connections with artists and artisans.
- 63% of our travelers repeat -- high ratings, high satisfaction.
- Wide ranging expertise: textiles, folk art, pottery, cultural wisdom.
- We give you a deep immersion to best know Oaxaca and Mexico.
We organize private travel + tours for museums, arts, organizations, collectors + appreciators.
Creating Connection and Meaning between travelers and with indigenous artisans. Meet makers where they live and work. Join small groups of like-minded explorers. Go deep into remote villages. Gain insights. Support cultural heritage and sustainable traditions. Create value and memories. Enjoy hands-on experiences. Make a difference.
What is a Study Tour: Our programs are learning experiences, and as such we talk with makers about how and why they create, what is meaningful to them, the ancient history of patterning and design, use of color, tradition and innovation, values and cultural continuity, and the social context within which they work. First and foremost, we are educators. Norma worked in top US universities for over 35 years and Eric founded the education department at Oaxaca’s textile museum. We create connection.
OCN Creates Student Scholarship at Oaxaca Learning Center Giving back is a core value. Read about it here
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Oaxaca Cultural Navigator LLC has offered programs in Mexico since 2006. We have over 30 years of university, textile and artisan development experience. See About Us.
Programs can be scheduled to meet your independent travel plans. Send us your available dates.
Arts organizations, museums, designers, retailers, wholesalers, curators, universities and others come to us to develop artisan relationships, customized itineraries, meetings and conferences. It's our pleasure to make arrangements.
Select Clients *Abeja Boutique, Houston *North Carolina Museum of Art *Selvedge Magazine-London, UK *Esprit Travel and Tours *Penland School of Crafts *North Carolina State University *WARP Weave a Real Peace *Methodist University *MINNA-Goods *Smockingbird Kids *University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tell us how we can put a program together for you! Send an email norma.schafer@icloud.com
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Oaxaca’s Contemporary Art Museum MACO Shows Ceramic Sculpture
A second floor exhibition of ceiling-height sculptural columns that I interpret as totems are made by ceramic artist Mariana Castillo Deball, who lives and works in Mexico City and Berlin. The show opened last night at MACO, the Museo Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca on Macedonio Alcala. The work is on view until April 20 and features indigenous objects — gourds, urns, animals, gods and goddesses, cooking vessels — many of which replicate those found at the archeological sites of Monte Alban and Atzompa.
MACO is no ordinary edifice. While conquistador Hernan Cortes never lived in Oaxaca, his son Martin Cortes, second Marquis del Valle de Oaxaca built and occupied this grand house. It is now a perfect public space to view large works created by Mexico’s masters. The art is larger than life and fits into the more than spacious galleries.
Innovando la Tradicion with 1050 Degrados have helped produce the exhibition. They are a nonprofit ceramics arts cooperative that helps promote indigenous ceramics in many of Oaxaca’s pre-Hispanic villages that have created functional and artistic ware for centuries.
The artist asks us to look at how past informs present and creates future. Using indigenous Mexican icons from cooking vessels to codices images to gears and other technological devices, she creates a vertical landscape for imagining, exploring the consonance of time and its objects, memory and influence on the present.
In addition to this wonderful show, other art in the building offers us a view into Mexico’s contemporary art scene. Plus, the balmy January evening gave me a chance to look over the balcony onto the Andador, the pedestrian walk that connects the Zocalo to Santo Domingo Church. In the distance a band played and a sequence of wedding parties paraded in and out of the neighborhood churches, too.
¿Quién medirá el espacio,
quién me dirá el momento?
Mariana Castillo Deball
Enero 24 – abril 20, 2015
Inauguración: Sábado 24 de enero, 7 pm – 9 pm.
La exposición inicia con una pregunta sobre la consonancia entre el tiempo y los objetos, y cómo la memoria se impregna del presente.
¿Cómo contar la historia del universo en cien años?
¿Cómo contar la historia del universo en un día?
Serpiente, pochote, engrane, trompo, pelota, guerrero-cornudo, madre tierra, alfarero, olla, murciélago, tornillo, perro, mazorca, rana con celular, raíz, lagartija, calabaza, anciano, guajolote, ceiba, columna infinita.
Este repertorio de objetos, algunos de ellos arqueológicos, otros mecánicos, lúdicos o sintéticos; fueron seleccionados en el presente, junto con el Taller de Cerámica Coatlicue en Atzompa, Oaxaca. La selección fue el sustento para imaginar una serie de historias, que ahora se alzan cual columnas en el espacio expositivo.
La pregunta inicial parte de la relación que los ceramistas de Atzompa tienen con su legado arqueológico y de qué manera este se expresa, se contamina o se disuelve en el presente. Lejos de tomar una postura purista, el trabajo comenzó con una serie de discusiones en torno a las copias, las falsificaciones, los cambios de estilo y las influencias en la historia de la arqueología mexicana.
El proyecto cuestiona la idea de una tradición estática que no se debe cambiar para poder existir, ampliando el debate de lo que es la arqueología en el presente y cómo puede ser actualizada constantemente para resignificar panoramas visuales de identidad.
Este proyecto un proyecto realizado en colaboración con el Taller de Cerámica Coatlicue, de la familia Hernández Alarzón en Santa María Atzompa, e Innovando la Tradición ac. Producido por el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca.
Mariana Castillo Deball (México, 1975) vive y trabaja en la Ciudad de México y en Berlín.
Oliver Martínez Kandt, Curador (Oaxaca, 1983) Curador del programa Monogramas del MACO.
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca. MACO
Alcalá 202, Centro Histórico
Oaxaca, Oaxaca, México
http://www.museomaco.com
info@museomaco.com
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