Museo Muñoz Acosta
winter-spring/2001

The only art museum in Puerto Vallarta is a
private endeavor bound to become a living
center for the arts that will contribute significantly to the city's expanding cultural base.
In January, 2000, a house remodeled to fill the basic specifications of a museum opened its doors to the public. Delighted with the idea, many attendees to the opening were nevertheless surprised at finding the work of only one living artist hanging on its double-height walls. Those whohad not heard about the artist may have thought they were being introduced to a new concept of commercial galleries. Not at all.

If a museum is a space inhabited by the muses, Ernesto Muñoz Acosta's are definitely entitled to a place of their own.Born in Guaymas, Sonora, sixty-something years ago, Ernesto's passion for painting manifested itself when he was seven years of age (among the pieces in this collection is a small, absolutely charming landscape executed by the artist as a child). As a young man he studied art in Mexico City, then in Rome and later in Paris, where he worked for two years in contemporary master painter Balthus's workshop (74 drawings made during this period were lost in the Mexican Post for 12 years, found and restored by his brother, Rodolfo. A couple of them can be admired today in the museum).
Art can tell stories about people, and a guided visit through this unique collection will reveal information not only about Ernesto but also about some well known cultural icons, present and past, and their relation—either personal or aesthetic—to the artist. If you are lucky enough to find him sitting by the door, listening to a Brahms concert, ask him to tell you about his heroes. Most of his paintings and installations exhibited now are homages paid to them. Among others, there are tributes to René Magritte ("the most important surrealist painter who made a deep impression on me when I was still a child"); Diego Velázquez, the Spanish genius and court portraitist who lived in the late 1500s; Frida Kahlo (whose installation includes a dress worn by the tragic Mexican painter and bought at a Sotheby's auction by a friend); Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and Nobel Prize winner and Roman Polanski, an old friend who, Ernesto says, will soon be visiting Vallarta. Some pieces are diptychs or triptychs of extraordinary dimensions whose display of great technique and sensitivity will undoubtedly touch your heart.