Museo José Guadalupe Posada

The Museo Jose Guadalupe Posada stands beside the Jardin del Encino in the Barrio del Encino, the oldest surviving neighbourhood of Aguascalientes, Mexico, and occupies a former priest's house next to the eighteenth-century Templo del Senor del Encino. It is dedicated to Jose Guadalupe Posada, born in this city in 1852, who trained as a lithographer in Aguascalientes before moving to Leon and then to Mexico City, where he produced tens of thousands of engravings for the penny press of Antonio Vanegas Arroyo until his death in poverty in 1913. Posada illustrated broadsides on crimes, disasters, miracles, ballads and political scandal for a largely non-literate audience, and it was in that commercial work that he developed the calavera, the animated skeleton standing in for the living, whose most famous incarnation, La Catrina, became a defining image of Mexican popular culture and of modern Day of the Dead iconography. The collection holds original prints, zinc and type-metal engraving plates, broadsheets as they were sold in the street, and material relating to the printing trade of the period, alongside personal items and documents from the artist's life. The display is thematic rather than strictly chronological, grouping the calaveras, the news illustrations and the religious and popular imagery, and it gives space to the printing process itself, so visitors can see how the plates relate to the sheets pulled from them. A second gallery hosts temporary exhibitions of graphic art, which often set contemporary Mexican printmakers against Posada's work. Opened in 1972, the museum is small and easily seen in an hour, with a shop selling reproductions. Admission is around $20 MXN, with free entry on Wednesdays, and hours run Wednesday to Sunday, 11:00AM to 6:00PM, so a Monday or Tuesday visit is not possible. The Barrio del Encino around it, with its cobbled lanes and painted houses, is one of the most atmospheric quarters of the city.