Have you ever imagined the Penacho de Moctezuma live? If the answer is yes, you will be interested to know that you will currently find an artistic installation that reinterprets the piece at the National Museum of Anthropology.
The first thing you should know is that this Penacho de Moctezuma is an amazing reinterpretation created by textile designer Valeria Corona. The reinterpreted piece has been achieved through the use of contemporary materials and traditional folk art techniques, so it could be defined as a modern Moctezuma Penacho.
To make the modern piece, made of black sheet, acrylic, LED light nodes and aluminum, with dimensions of 130 by 220 centimeters and 17 kilos, was combined the traditional technique of metalwork, executed by master craftsman Gerardo Hermosillo, and laser cutting, by the specialist Gustavo Rojas.
The exhibition intends to return this Tenochca emblem, in a symbolic way, to its place of origin. In addition to building a dialogue between ancestral knowledge and technology, with traditional techniques.
This illuminated piece is at the National Museum of Anthropology since February 7, in the half moon of the cultural precinct, and will remain there until February 16, so you are still in time to visit it! You can go and see it 100% free from Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 18:00 hours.
About the original Penacho de Moctezuma
It is not news, that the original Moctezuma Chest has been out of Mexico for 500 years, and although there have been many proposals to recover it, it remains in the Ethnological Museum of Vienna, in Austria.
This is one of the most valuable and impressive pieces preserved from Mexico’s pre-Hispanic era, and it is still a mystery how it ended up on the European continent.
The most accepted theory is that the plume was a gift from Moctezuma Xocoyotzin to Hernán Cortés, when they still had a good relationship, so it was sent by the Spaniards to King Carlos I along with other objects that were taken from Mexico. King Carlos I was a member of the Habsburg family, coming from Austria, which could explain why it is currently there.
The original Moctezuma plume has a height of 116 cm and a width of 175 cm, and is made with blue, pink, brown, and the largest green feathers. The piece also has details of gold and precious stones.
It has an approximate value of 50 million dollars, and although the Mexican government has been trying to recover it for many years, a team of restorers has declared that the plume is very fragile and deteriorated, so moving it would put the piece at a very high risk.