In January, I took a business trip to Mexico. On the second afternoon I escaped from the Commercial Gifts and Accessories Show to visit Mexico City’s Museum of Anthropology. Set in a woodland park with a name in Nauhatl, one of the original languages of Mexico, Chapultepec, Hill of the Grasshoppers, the Museum is a two storey building set around a central courtyard, at one end of which is something like a fountain.
But here, the water, rather than shooting upwards, falls from a giant column the height of the building. The carved stone column is a fertilising penis dripping blood, a tree reaching up to the sky, the arching vault of an underground cave.
The museum is extraordinary. With all the rich archaeology of Mexico and the many civilsations that were born here, flourished and spread, exchanged ideas, evolved and died, this is truly a museum of anthropology – about people.