The Guadalajara Reporter

Private collection goes public in new Guadalajara museum

Around 200 quirky, stylized clay figurines that belonged to an antiquities collector from a well-known family in Guadalajara society have been assembled into an impressive exhibit in the city’s newest public museum, the Museo de las Culturas del Occidente (Museum of Western Cultures), which only opened in September.

In 1993, Mario Collignon found the last tomb from which he collected the clay figurines, many about two feet high. These are the highlight of the show “Inspiracion en Barro — Arte y cultura de la muerte” (Inspiration in Clay — Art and Culture of Death). And Collignon’s finds, which came from “bottle” tombs (tumbas de tiro) found hidden around the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Colima and Michoacan, seem the perfect material to open a museum devoted to exactly this region — the western, and archeologically lesser known part of Mexico.

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