Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico
Museo del Calendario (Calendar Museum)
The world's first museum of its kind is packed with nostalgic relics of the past.
The Landin family does more than own a calendar factory—they also collect calendars. They’ve even opened a museum in a 17th-century mansion to exhibit their vast collection. It’s the world’s first museum of its kind.
When you go to the museum, you’ll be sure to notice scenes painted by the great artists of Mexican calendars. Perhaps the most memorable are the ones created by Ferrari, an artist who painted pin-up girls in the ’50s.
But undoubtedly the most nostalgic and abundant part of the museum is the one showcasing a calendar for each year of the 20th century. Art Deco illustrations grace the 1930 calendar; a 1947 calendar celebrates the announcement of modern dental implants; the calendar for 1968 honors the Mexican Olympic Games; and 1983 features imagery of spacecraft. Take a good look at the illustrations for the calendars made during the years of the Second World War, where you’ll see Nazis represented as a dead dragon and the Japanese as a monstrous octopus.
The museum contains nods to the calendars of the much more distant past, too. One of the jewels of the collection is a replica of an Aztec calendar carved into a massive chunk of cedar wood, which occupies an entire museum room. It was made by Irma Covarrubias and Luis Hernández and weighs almost 600 kilograms.
Contributed by
Mario Yair TS
