Category Archives: Museums

Olé The Best of Mexico City & Oaxaca!

Posted on by

After 20 years of curating Luxury Travel for our select clients, when we receive Grateful Notes of Thanks, it’s a reminder of how much time and determination we’ve devoted into sourcing the best and brightest teams in each pocket of the world. And our teams evolve as we continue to discover the Best of the Best!

Mexico City and Oaxaca are two complimentary cities to combine for extensive art, OTT dining, history and exceptional local experiences. Just a short flight from the United States, Mexico is an often-overlooked destination for rich cultural offerings, a land seemingly familiar but with many unknown secrets simply waiting to be discovered. For many people images of margaritas, maracas, and tacos may be the first to come to mind. Our hope is to show you something more – to connect you with incredible local guides who truly love their country and want to show you the rich layers of its culture and who will bring you to the lesser known, but equally spectacular locations. Mexico City offers excellent contrasts in epic street food tastings to five-star chef driven dining palaces! Cutting edge art museums from folk to dynamic contemporary collections.

The experiences awaiting you in Mexico are plentiful and can be hand-picked to match your interests. With an average of 20 ingredients, you could spend a day in Oaxaca learning how to make mole. Or there is an unbelievable art scene in Mexico – with Mexico City offering more museums than any other city in the world, not to mention the renowned home of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

A recent client note to Benjamin: We had a wonderful memorable vacation and enjoyed Celebrating our 40th Wedding Anniversary in Oaxaca and Mexico City —both destinations were everything we were hoping they would be and more!

Casa Polanco in Mexico City, again you recommended the best hotel! Fantastic hotel— great service, very comfortable room, good fitness facility, good location. You recommended staying in town in Oaxaca and we unfortunately resisted and stayed outside town, which meant we encountered traffic every time we went into town- next time we listen to you and stay in town as you suggested!

Guides in Oaxaca and Mexico City – all very good, particularly our guide in Mexico City.

Visits Archeological visits— all excellent and very much worth our time. After hours, private tour of Anthropology Museum— so glad we took you up on this, very special to see it in the evening without crowds. Would like more time in there! Xochimilco experience— fantastic. Even though there is a more commercial way to visit here, the personal visit we experienced gave us an insider’s view of the floating farms. Our guide and the lunch they served us were fantastic.

Dining Criollo restaurant— EXCELLENT— one of our favorites. Levadura restaurant— also excellent! Pujol— very good— food was fantastic, the setting was a bit more commercial and filled with American tourists— but still wouldn’t miss dining here! Taco Tour— very well done— Lydia the guide is excellent Em restaurant— another excellent choice. Their food is spectacular, fine Mexican with a good deal of Asian influence.

That’s it! Again, thank you very much for all your help in making this a memorable 40th Wedding Anniversary Celebration, your teams are amazing and they gave us lovely Anniversary gifts as well!

Mexico City A sprawling city simply bursting with energy, a true melting pot of international talent. Known for its incredible range of fine dining options as well as some of the city’s best street food. There are countless ways to spend your days – from visiting nearby ruins, to touring the home of Frida Kahlo, to participating in a cooking class, to catching a local wresting match (lucha libre). Mexico City is an urban jungle with something to offer anyone.

Oaxaca One of Mexico’s most beautiful cities meets its most robust and unique culinary destination. Oaxaca is an excellent destination for anyone interested in gastronomy, from cooking classes to market tours to some of the country’s best restaurants. Oaxaca is also known for its artisan communities that dot the surrounding area – from textiles to pottery there are plenty of reasons to visit.

Gracias to our fine teams and to our gracious clients!

Highly Recommend Mexico City and Oaxaca Journey!

Art Notes Caillebotte – Painting Men – Secrets behind Caillebotte

Posted on by

Among the hundreds of Impressionist paintings, the Floor Scrapers has always been one of my favorites. I’m not certain where I first viewed it in person, but I’ve never forgotten it. The neutral pallet ranging from bright sunlight to dark shadows combine to produce stark contrasts. An obvious variance to pastel impressionist paintings.

Autumn opening for the exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay focuses on Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) and his predilection for masculine forms and portraits of men and seeks to examine this artist’s profoundly radical modernity through the lens of art history’s changing perspective on 19th-century forms of masculinity.

In a desire to produce a new, authentic form of art, Caillebotte took his subjects from his surroundings (Haussmann’s Paris, the country houses around the capital), his male acquaintances (his brothers, the workers employed by his family, his boating friends) , and ultimately from his own life. In response to the realist movement, he introduced new figures into his paintings: an urban worker, a man on a balcony, a sportsman, and even an intimate portrait of a male nude at his ‘toilette’. In an era when virility and republican fraternity prevailed, but traditional masculinity was also in crisis for the first time, these new, powerful images challenged the established order, both social and sexual. Beyond his own identity – that of a young rich Parisian bachelor – Caillebotte also brought profound questions into the male condition at the heart of Impressionism and Modernism.

This project was inspired by the recent acquisition of two of Caillebotte’s major works, by the J.Paul Getty Museum ( Young Man at His Window ) and the Musée d’Orsay ( A Boating Party ), and centers around a masterpiece from this artist, Paris Street; Rainy Day, on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition, which presents around 70 pieces, includes Caillebotte’s most important paintings of people, as well as pastels, sketches, photographs, and documents.

This event is organized in the year of the 130th anniversary of the artist’s death (1894), which is also the date when his outstanding collection of Impressionist paintings was bequeathed to the French government. To mark the occasion, the entire bequest will be on show in a temporary exhibition in one of the museum’s permanent galleries, reproducing the 1897 opening of the “Caillebotte Gallery” at the Musée du Luxembourg.

Mostly active in the 1870s and 1880s, Caillebotte stands apart from the other Impressionists for being the one artist to frequently depict men, and often in ambiguous scenes where one is never entirely sure of the artist’s intention or the viewpoint of the male figures within.

This is one of a long series of exhibitions, beginning with a major retrospective in 1994-1995 (Paris, Chicago), which have allowed the public to reconnect with Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) and have shed light on certain aspects of his work: the Yerres period, the connection between his paintings and photography, and his passion for garden design, among others.

Paris: Musée d’Orsay – October 08th, 2024 to January 19th, 2025. The exhibition will be on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from February 25 to May 25, 2025, and at the Art Institute of Chicago from June 29 to October 5, 2025.