Museo de Arte Moderno de México, Mexico City, Mexico

This is such a gorgeous musem. It is among the biggest museums of its kind in Latin America, witn an extraordinary collection focuses on the evolution of modern art in Mexico, especially with the Mexican School of Painting and the Breakaway Generation. In the equally beautifulChapultepec Park, the museum is housed in two circular buildings with two floors each and divided into four halls, and a gallery. You walk in and are immediatelywowed by how spectacular the design is. A remarkable sculpture garden connects the two buildings. The Xavier Villaurrutia and Carlos Pellicer halls allow visitors to admire the museum’s considerable permanent collection. This includes works by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, and Frida Kahlo, among others. Other halls are used for temporary exhibitions which display parts of the museum’s collection curated under varying themes and topics. These exhibitions often reach some considerable international notoriety. The MAM plays an important role in research and investigation related to modern and contemporary art. Having opened in 1964 with an exhibition of works by Rufino Tamayo, the buildings were completed based on a design by the architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Carlos A. Cazares Salcido of the University of Sonora. They worked in collaboration with Rafael Mijares Alcérreca. The main body of the museum takes an organic form, curved in parallel to the Paseo de la Reforma. It was intended to respond to the landscape and surrounding undulating trees. It’s also, importantly, always been understood as a highly modern capstone to the country’s modernization process. Having been designed, built, and opened at the very peak of the Mexican economic miracle, also part of the museum's story.

Forbidden Words Quilt Project

I just heard Lorraine Woodruff-Long speak about this project, which has been completed and is a quilt that is going on tour. Quilters have always been political and in the current climate, we are starting to feel like screaming is appropriate. Here is the background for this project from their website: A growing list of words and materials is being scrubbed from government websites and documents and flagged for review by federal agencies in an attempt by the Trump administration to remove all references not only to diversity, equity and inclusion, but also to climate change, vaccines, and a host of other topics. PEN America initially compiled a list of more than 250 words and phrases reportedly no longer considered acceptable by the Trump administration, from “abortion,” to “women,” and including “disability,” “elderly,” “Native American”and, unsurprisingly, the “Gulf of Mexico.” The list has now expanded to 384+ words and phrases, encompassing even desirable goals like “safe drinking water,” the mention of which can now result in research grants or other agreements with the federal government getting nixed. Some agencies ordered the removal of specific words from public-facing websites or the elimination of other materials (including school curricula) in which they might be included. In other cases, federal agencies used key words to flag materials for further review or asked staff to limit or avoid their usage. FORBIDDEN WORDS QUILT PROJECT Throughout the Fall 2025, they reached out to quilters, creators and makers to create blocks that will be sewn into a quilt featuring the words/phrases compiled by PEN America that are being flagged by the U.S. federal agencies to ban, limit, or avoid. Text will be created using fabric, letter templates and fusible, and cut out by hand and ironed onto a fabric block. Blocks will be cut from repurposed shirting, ideally from thrift and reclamation outlets or from your own home. THree quilters in my own guild (that I know of) participated in this amazing project. More to come.

Andrea Tsang Jackson: Transparency

I watched a lecture given by this artist, who trained as a gemologist, and who has translated that into quilt blocks for all 12 of the birth stones--using just 5 fabrics to create the gem effect--reallt remarkable, but that is not all. She does large public art instillations that are quilt inspired, and the lectire I listened to was one where you use on like color tools to get a transparenct effect, which was mind blowing. When I see those quilts in the transparency category at QuiltCon I thought they did it themselves, and maybe some of them do, but you do not have to guess--you can feed in the two colors that will cross paths in your quilt and it will tell you the color that would result in sucha a mixing. More on that later when I play with it a bit. More on this artist first. This is her artist statement: Andrea Tsang Jackson is a Canadian-born textile artist of Chinese descent based in Kjipuktuk / Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her work takes the traditional craft medium of quilting and applies it to a contemporary context, often using bright hues and bold graphics. She abstracts intentionally accessible imagery, inviting points of connection from the viewer to spark discussion and inquiry. Clean and crisp, vibrant but not loud, Andrea’s work uses solid-coloured commercial fabrics, found textiles, hand-dyed and painted fabrics, and more recently Tyvek. Andrea’s work often celebrates community and collaboration, and explores ideas of home and belonging. The rich history of quilting also heavily influences her practice; she sees it as an extension of community across time. Andrea strives to push the limits of the quilting medium — and other textile media — by exploring scale and dimension and moving traditionally domestic objects into the public realm. Through her public art in recent years, Andrea’s work has explored the translation of textiles into other media – drawing, architectural mesh, and acrylic carving. This act of translation continually poses questions of what textiles mean to us as communities and how textile work exists outside the home. The boundaries around folk art, fine craft and fine art are a continual source of enquiry in her practice as she operates within all of these areas.

Les Lapidiales de Port d'Envaux, France

Here’s a cool thing—since we were already going to Saintes, Joel looked in the France Rough Guide for other things in the area and found this sculpture site, which is open 24/7 and no fee. It is an old limestone quarry that has dozens of sculptures over a very walkable site with loads of parking. I was reading recently that with the advent of lots of free content on the internet it was thought that the age of the guidebook was over, and maybe it is for some, but not so for me. I get them electronically now (the search funtion has really improved, and I have stopped carrying any sort of paper when I travel to lighten my load) but I love them, and spend a lot of time with them before we go, planning out the trip locations to visit.

Here is what they have to say for themselves: The white limestone cliff walls and underground chambers where the rock was once quarried are covered in sculptures in styles ranging from abstract to figurative. For twelve years, the Lapidiales site has offered a unique residency to contemporary sculptors of all nationalities who come to carve new works into the stone. The artists are free to build fantastic stone sculptures with a view to giving future generations a work from which to be inspired, creating a perpetually growing art space. The project was started by actor, director, designer, and sculptor Alain Tenenbaum who still oversees the space. The open air art quarry is free and open year round just waiting for visitors to come and find their own. It is truly spectacular!

The Streets of Christchurch, New Zealand

Happy Canada Day! The three countries besides the United States the British colonized that were largely unpopulated when they arrived are all worth visiting, and are populated by very nice people, much nicer and friendlier than my own country (especially if you consider I am a native of one and a visitor in the others).

Christchurch is the largest city on the South Island, and unlike Queenstown, it is largely flat and not a mix of residential and commercial. We stayed in a late 19th century house that is now a bed and breakfast and right across the street from the art museum. The old houses in the neighborhood have not been engulfed by high rises or businesses.

There is a lot of public art on the streets, and I recommend walking everywhere.