Last night the San Diego Museum of Art placed a Volkswagon Bug on display in one of its galleries. But it's not your run of the mill Beetle.
The exhibit, Vochol: Huichol Art on Wheels, will be on display in the same gallery as the incredible Writerz Blok mural, and the two works of art provide a perfect complement to each other. The exhibit is free to the public through March 10 at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park.
Roxana Velasquez, Executive Director of the San Diego Museum of Art, calls it "a spectacular piece of art as you can see. It's a beetle, a Volkswagon that was decorated during 2 years, 2 years by the Huichol, this community of Nayarit and Jalisco in Mexico City, and they used 2,277,000 beads that demonstrated most of their ideas."
Velasquez was key in bringing the Vochol to San Diego and tapped into he friendship with Marie Thérese Hermand de Arango, President, Asociación de Amigos del Museo de Arte Popular, to make it happen.
"Roxanna and I have been longtime friends," says Marie Thérese Hermand de Arango,"When she saw the Vochol she fell in love with it. This car is very special because it's for us a piece of contemporary art. So she said it should come here and we were delighted to have it here because for us it takes a lot of meaning to bring it to a state that is very near Mexico."
The Vochol is a project that is starting in San Diego but then it will tour the world, stopping at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC before moving on to the Musee de Quai Branly in Paris.
