For those interested in the folk arts of Mexico, up for auction is a copy of Con Cariño: Mexican Folk Art, a 1986 exhibition catalogue featuring over 300 works of art shown at the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), which published the softcover title (and the smaller publication tucked within it that includes the Spanish-language text only of the larger book). The book's author is Marion Oettinger, Jr., Ph.D. (born 1942), one-time Curator of Folk Art and Latin American Art at the museum and, since 1918, its Curator Emeritus of Latin American Art (he was also the museum's director from 2005-2011). The majority of the works making up the show are from the world-renowned SAMA collections that were gifts of Nelson A. Rockefeller and Robert K. Winn.
The triple-stapled main catalogue measures 8-1/2 inches wide by 11 inches high and comprises 70 pages, while the smaller, double-stapled Spanish-language publication is 7-1/2 inches wide by 10-3/4 inches high and comprises 40 pages. In the main catalogue there are, by my count, 26 color images, with 19 of them color and 7 black-and-white.
The decorated title page, which includes an inked inscription from the curator dated 1986, reads:
CON CARIÑO
MEXICAN FOLK ART
from
the Collection
of the San Antonio Museum Association
By
Marion Oettinger, Jr. PhD
Curator of Folk Art
CON CARIÑO is made possible by a
generous grant from H.E.B. Foods/Drugs
and additional gifts from Mr. and Mrs. David T. Dillon,
Mr. Joe Nicholson, and Mr. and Mrs. Marshall T. Steves, Sr.
On the inside front cover, which is quite sunned and browned (likely a newspaper clipping had been placed there for some time), there's information on the lovely cover itself, which reads: "The catalogue cover is based on designs from the papel amatl (bark paper) of San Pablito, Pueblo and the papel picado (paper cut-outs) of San Salvador Huixcolotla, Puebla." The same design adorns the wraparound cover of the Spanish-language booklet tucked into the back of the main (English-language) catalogue.
The Table of Contents, opposite a lovely color image of a 19th-century painted and lacquered tray from the State of Michoacan, reads (leaving out the page numbers):
Here’s most of the article on the San Antonio Museum of
Art, a wonderful institution I visited some years ago and was most impressed by:
The San Antonio
Museum of Art (SAMA) is an art museum in Downtown San Antonio, Texas,
USA. The museum spans 5,000 years of global culture. The museum is housed in
the historic former Lone Star Brewery (1886) on the Museum Reach of
the San Antonio River Walk. Following a $7.2 million renovation, it opened to
the public in March 1981.
HISTORY. In 1926, the San Antonio Museum Association founded the
Witte Memorial Museum with the intentions of collecting various works of art
and natural history objects. By the 1970s, the Witte Memorial Museum
acquired notable works of art by artists such as Frank Stella, Wayne Thiebaud,
and Philip Guston. Due to the growing pace of art acquisitions, Jack
McGregor (former director of the San Antonio Museum Association) recommended
the board purchase the former Lone Star Brewery complex and split away from the
Witte Memorial Museum. SAMA officially opened its doors to the public on
March 1, 1981.
In 1985, it received
collections of Latin American Folk Art formed by former vice president Nelson
A. Rockefeller and Robert K. Winn.
The museum is situated
on the northern section of the Riverwalk. With the opening of the Gloria
Galt River Landing in 2009, it now anchors the "Museum Reach"
expansion of the celebrated Riverwalk.
COLLECTIONS.
The museum's collection of more than 30,000 objects
representing 5,000 years of history and culture from every region of the world
includes important works from Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, Asian art,
Latin American art, and Contemporary art.
Art of
the Ancient Mediterranean World. The museum houses one of
the largest and most comprehensive collections of ancient Egyptian, Near
Eastern, Greek, and Roman art in the southern United States. The Egyptian
collection holds objects from the Pre-dynastic through the late Roman and
Byzantine periods. It also houses an important and rare collection of Greek and
Roman sculpture that encompasses portraits, funerary sculpture, and
mythological subjects.
Asian
Art. The Asian art collection is housed in the Lenora and Walter
F. Brown Asian Art Wing, a 15,000-square-foot suite of galleries that opened in
2005. Over the past 70 years, the museum's Asian art collections have grown to
become one of the most impressive in the United States, including more than
1,500 works from China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar,
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam.
Latin
American Art. The museum has one of the most comprehensive collections of
Latin American art in the United States. The collection is housed in the Nelson
A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, which opened to the public in
1998. The center offers an overview of artwork from Mexico, Central and South
America, and many countries of the Caribbean, and one of the world's most
important repositories of Latin American folk art with a collection numbering
over 7,000 objects.
Contemporary.
A significant portion of the museum's Contemporary
collection is devoted to post-World War II American painting and sculpture,
including an emphasis on modernist abstraction. In addition, it has always been
committed to the collection of Contemporary Texas Art, and it features
paintings and sculpture produced by Texas artists from the late 1960s to the present
day. The collection includes two sculptures by San Antonio-born Bonnie
MacLeary.
FORMER
STREETCAR SERVICE. From 1982 through 1985, the museum also operated a heritage
streetcar service, using an original San Antonio streetcar built
in 1913 and nicknamed "Old 300." The all-yellow car operated on a
short section of Texas Transportation Company (TXTC) tracks behind
it. TXTC was an electric railroad, operating trains powered from overhead
trolley wires, and its tracks still reached the former Lone Star Brewery complex,
in which it was installed in 1981. Streetcar service in San Antonio ended in
1933, but car 300 was preserved at that time by the San Antonio Museums
Association. In 1981, volunteers restored car 300 to operating condition as a
historical attraction.
Public operation began
in October 1982. The car ran twice a day Tuesday through Friday and six
times a day on weekends, but budget cuts led to the service's being
discontinued at the end of 1985. The 1913 streetcar was placed in storage,
being operated (without passengers) a few times a year to keep it in running
condition, until 1990, when it was leased to a company in Portland,
Oregon, for use on the Willamette Shore Trolley line there.
The museum continued to
be car 300's owner, leasing it to entities in Oregon, but in 2005 it sold the
car to the Astoria Riverfront Trolley Association, which had been
operating it on a popular heritage streetcar line in Astoria,
Oregon, since 1999.
The overall condition of this triple-stapled softcover catalogue, which includes a smaller double-stapled book with Spanish-language text, is very good. There's minor bumping, spotting, age-toning / sunning on the wrapper of the main publication, with the Spanish publication in excellent condition. There's some discoloration / browning (likely from old newspaper clippings laid in at some time) on the inside front cover, but the off-white / cream-colored pages inside of both publications are in very good condition. There's an author's inscription (with a date of 1986) inked on the title page, but there are no other annotations, marginalia, underlining, scribbles, etc., within, nor any major damage or flaws in either book in the way of clipped or missing pages, large tears, water or other liquid damage, tape repairs, etc. The silver-tone metal staples have rusted a bit, causing some browning on adjacent pages in both catalogs. There's neither a musty nor smoky odor to the English and Spanish publications. Note that there are some Mexican-art-related items laid in that presumably belonged to the Massachusetts couple to whom the author has inscribed a message on the book's title page. (One of the enclosures is an invitation to dinner at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Steves, two of SAMA's most generous patrons, with "Dark suit/cocktail dress / Mexican folk attire" the recommended dress.)
This well-preserved copy of Con Cariño: Mexican Folk Art, published by the San Antonio Museum of Art and including a larger English-language and smaller Spanish-language publication, is being sold AS IS, AS DESCRIBED ABOVE AND PICTURED WITHIN. I am setting what I feel is a reasonable starting price for the auction, and there is NO RESERVE. I am also including a Buy It Now price.
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Thanks for looking, and please don't hesitate to email me if you have any questions about this copy of Con Cariño: Mexican Folk Art, an exhibition catalogue published by the San Antonio Museum of Art in 1986.
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