MEXICO CITY — California-based multimedia artist Mike Rogers was finishing his photographs for an exhibition in Mexico City when he got an urgent e-mail from the curator: The show had been called off. The capital's contemporary art museums were broke and shutting down.
The message was exaggerated. Museums are not closing -- yet. But across Mexico City's eclectic art world, museum directors, curators, artists and performers are bracing for a round of recession-triggered budget cuts that could prove devastating.
"I am very worried. Everyone is," said Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy, the young, dynamic director of Mexico's famous Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art who, like many of her colleagues, is scrambling to find ways to pinch pesos without hurting the art.
Although museums from Los Angeles to London are feeling the crunch from the global economic meltdown, the crisis is particularly acute in a country that prides itself on a unique artistic tradition, where access to "culture" is enshrined in the constitution.
For artists left out in the cold like Rogers, there is disappointment. He and creative partner Dustin Ericksen were originally scheduled to show their collection of hundreds of glasses and other drinking vessels used by famous and aspiring artists, a project years in the making. The exhibit at the Carrillo Gil Art Museum, slated for Aug. 26 to Nov. 16, was then scaled back to photographs of the project, Rogers said. And then, he was told, it was canceled altogether.
"The story is so sad," Rogers, 51, said by telephone from Long Beach. "Everyone here is a victim, from the artists to museum-goers to the museums."
(Shortly after The Times made inquiries of the museum, Rogers received another e-mail from the curator, saying that the show might go on after all, limited to a slide show.)
Museums in Mexico were already reeling from a sharp decline in visitors after spring's deadly swine flu epidemic. To fight the spread of the virus, the government ordered public venues, including museums, to temporarily close their doors, and the tourism industry all but collapsed.
And just when many of the galleries that display everything from ancient statues to Frida Kahlo to avant-garde videos were beginning to recover, Mexico announced emergency plans to cut billions of dollars from the federal budget. That is going to hurt a wide range of programs and institutions, including schools, road and other infrastructure construction, state and municipal governments, and cultural projects.
