Art in San Miguel de Allende - with Greg Gunter

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio talks to Real Estate Agent Greg Gunter about Christmas in Mexico's iconic San Miguel de Allende. 

For more information on Greg's work and real estate investments & opportunities, click on:

https://bhhscolonialhomessanmiguel.com/

https://dreamprohomesluxury.com/

Transcript

Jon Bonfiglio 0:01

Welcome back. We're in San Miguel again with our favorite host, Greg Gunter. And today we're talking about art

Greg Gunter 0:07

The biggest concentration of art galleries is right here in the Fabrica Aurora. We have lots of other galleries around San Antonio's overall art galleries. Let's go take a look at inside.

Jon Bonfiglio 0:35

Can you just tell us a little bit about where we are how we came to be?

Greg Gunter 0:42

It's interesting, this was a woolspinning factory from the mid eighties. And it was vacant for a lot of decades, and then a binational couple turned it into an art gallery complex. So it's become the genesis for the art world. One of the cool things about it is that they had on the first Saturday of every month. So there's a huge uh quite a big block party. It's a lot of fun. But it's also big eat and drink, so we all got it because of like a big block party, which fantastic art to see your adding a lot of local artists and a lot of international artists as well. So it's really a fun, fantastic art collection. I mean, literally like two or three thousand of us have come wherever you want. It is a big space, yeah. Lots of I mean lots of room, obviously, for restaurants and you know, some terraces and things like that. So there's lots of room here to be the for a few parties.

Jon Bonfiglio 1:56

And every time I've been here as well, there's always been whatever day of the week it is or weekends, there's always interested people that are coming through. Like any space, there's people looking at art, talking about art. It does seem to be a really lived space.

Greg Gunter 2:08

Artists in particular love to come to San Miguel because of our reputation. So we get a ton of artists that come down specifically to kind of see, well, really more the art scene as much as they do their culture and the history of the city. They'll come down and see the art scene. So there's yeah, a ton of artists that come down and this is their mecca to to uh come down and take a look to do fabric or for all the different galleries as well.

Jon Bonfiglio 2:31

So, Greg, my my understanding is that the the sort of the international importance of fusion importance are art in San Miguel forces based around Mexico's great broad tradition alongside art, but also focuses or emerges around the arrival of some key individuals in the early half of the of the 20th century from the US. Would that be right?

Greg Gunter 2:50

Key Americans, yeah, exactly, exactly. So it's interesting. A uh a gringo from Chicago named Sterling Dickinson came down here in 1937, and in 1938 he opened the Bellas Artes School with a Peruvian artist named uh Felipe Cassio. The two of them opened the Bellas Artes in 1938 and operated that for quite some time. But it's interesting, a few years later, an Arkansas Beauty Queen came down, and the uh ex-governor of uh Guanajuato fell in love with her. Um, that was not too great for his political career. So he's like, honey, what are we gonna do for a living now? And they decided to open up the Instituto Allende. So they bought the old, what was the old summer home of the Canal family, one of the oldest and richest families, you know, in historic families here in town, and they had a uh a summer home on the edge of town. So uh Enrique Fernandez and his wife Nell Harris, the American that I was talking about, bought the Instituto and then went in partnership with uh Sterling Dickinson and Felipe to open the Instituto Allende, and that happened in about 48. 47, 48, don't quote me exactly, team. So it was interesting because Nell was an American, she knew that she could get the school certified to be eligible for the uh the uh the GI bill for education. So a lot of the GIs that were coming out of World War II could get the GI bill. They got a $500 a month stipend. Well, in the late 40s, you could live like a king down here for $500 a month. So, you know, they would all come down and and and rent was $15 a month and a beer was a nickel of beer, and they sketch people all day long and, you know, sketch the landscape and call it art and education and to say, hey, we love it here, we're just gonna keep living here. So really it was the late 40s when the Americans, especially the artists, started coming down and becoming uh, you know, populating the city with more of an artistic vent.

Jon Bonfiglio 4:39

And we've spoken a number of times a lot about how the city attracts a particular kind of person. I'm guessing that also is relevant historically, that the first Americans who really came down and populated San Miguel over an extended period of time, like they didn't come on holiday, they came here to do something. They came here to to convalesce, to heal, and art was a key component with that as well. So from that point on, I'm guessing the way that San Miguel was spoken about in the United States was spoken about in very particular circles to very particular people as well. It wasn't come and spend a week on a beach, it was about come and spend time and um create art and be in a Mexican community.

Greg Gunter 5:15

Picking up on that comment, we joked that everyone moves to San Miguel de Allende to reinvent themselves as something, right? And it's so funny, one of the more famous businesswomen in town, I used to have an interview column, and I interviewed her one time. She'd been here since gosh, she'd been here right after World War II. And her name was Dottie, and I said, Well, Dottie, you came down to reinvent yourself. She goes, No, not really. And I said, Well, come on, let's chat chat about that. And I said, What did you used to do before you came to San Miguel? She goes, Well, I was an air traffic controller during the war. And I said, So what'd you come down to San Miguel for? She said, I came down to take art classes to become an artist. I said, Well, that's kind of reinventing yourself, isn't it? And she says, Oh, I never thought about that. So a lot of people came down with a different background that wanted to learn more about their artistic bent, their artistic talents, and and develop that further. And of course, then they bring more artistic friends down, and that artistic circle has kind of grown from there. You almost is sort of a personal growth. It is a growth, and then you know, it's it's kind of a a path that they take. And in that particular case, she did not become an artist, she became one of the more popular realtors in town, which is so funny. One of the first realtors to have a a real estate office in town. But that's what she first came down was to become an artist. And you know that happens with some artists. It's sometimes tough to pay the rent with the art, so you might end up seguing into other things, but you know, primarily we've got a big, really art population here.

Jon Bonfiglio 6:34

Oh, she still re reinvented herself, just not quite in the way that she'd she'd imagine. And you're saying, of course, we're in the Fabrica Aurora, but there's also lots of different spaces around town. I mean, partly art spaces, but also artisan spaces. Uh, it's very clear just walking around town. Now, and of course there's a market for it as well, but how the concept of art is really central to how San Miguel understands itself today.

Greg Gunter 6:59

Yes, there's as an as an example, there's an art gallery opening probably four nights a week here. Um, it's amazing. You could go to an art gallery opening during the day, happy hour time, your evening, they've got all kinds of art gallery openings all the time. Listing artists that will come in, so they'll do a presentation or a gallery demonstration around a listing artist, you know, for instance. So there's there's a lot of art-themed uh events and and concepts that are going on, you know, all the time here. It's a again, very artistic community. A lot of people have some bit of some sort of an artistic bent. And it's not all watercolors or you know, encoustics, it's pottery. It's I'm uh there's a lot of writers that live down here. I'm an I'm a novelist myself, for instance. So that's kind of my artistic vent. I'm also an architect. So that's my creative side, is my designing things and writing novels. But there's a lot of writers down here as well, a lot of the design people that come down, interior designers that come down. So anyone with an artistic event really loves the energy of this place, you know, we're supposedly built out of better crystals here. So a lot of people think they're getting their energy from that or their creative inspiration from that that that environment that we have here in San Miguel.

Jon Bonfiglio 8:04

And I know that next month we're going to be talking um about festivals throughout the course of the year in San Miguel. But just honing in on art specifically, are there any sort of big dates that come to mind in your in your mind in terms of kind of calendar dates that are important for maybe uh somebody who's interested in in visiting San Miguel specifically? Of course, there's things going on all the time, right? As you say, every day, every week, there's gallery openings. But any key points in the calendar you would say that that somebody may want to make the most of in terms of coming to visit?

Greg Gunter 8:34

It's just going to be related to contemporary art. It's interesting that we're not quite. We were just talking before we got on camera here about, you know, Art Basil and in Miami is coming up. And we don't quite have that concentrated of a concentration here where we get a lot of the big names that come and, you know, a lot of the uh distributors and dealers that come here. So we don't quite have that kind of event that's a once-a-year, you know, people come from all over the world. It's really kind of scattered throughout the year. So I have to say, but we're not quite at that point yet. It's perhaps not quite that sophisticated of a market. It's more of a, you know, that's my you know, we we don't get the Jeff Coons of the world down here, you know. It's not that kind of a sophisticated market down here, if you want to call Jeff sophisticated.

Jon Bonfiglio 9:15

Well, I mean, you you could regard that as a blessing. You could also regard it as a curse.

Greg Gunter 9:18

Yes, we actually like that because it kind of nurtures the newer artists down here. People come down to refine their artistic talents. You know, this is where they learn more about. There's a lot of existing artists that really do have some great talent that teach the newcomers that come down. So it's a little bit more of a teaching environment, a little bit more of an amateur environment, not quite as professional as you might find in you know, Art Basel or places like that. Yeah. But we like that.

Jon Bonfiglio 9:41

And you were saying that there's a there's a mix between local artists and international artists.

Greg Gunter 9:44

We do get some international artists here, especially with at some of the galleries. There's a war hall hanging. We just walk by one, there's a war hall hanging there. There's a Calder uh also in that same art gallery. So we get some of those big names. Obviously, neither one of those exists to come visit anymore, but occasionally we get some big, big artists as well. Photographers, we'll get, you know, well-known photographers that come here for that as well. There's a really well-known uh photographer named Spencer Tunick that comes here two or three times a year and does some of his big uh photographic installations. So, you know, we get some of those kind of names that come to San Miguel. We're one of the favorites.

Jon Bonfiglio 10:17

Yeah, amazing. Uh yeah, and and it's um again, it's a recurring theme in the conversations that that we've had. But again, this this sort of this um I mean it's not quite accidental, but this this fusion of of cultures and this hybridity of of different art forms seems to have found its home. It's easy home in San Miguel because it doesn't it doesn't conflict with anything else. Sort of it seems like San Miguel's always been really ready to sort of receive these different people from different parts of the world, but these different industries, uh, and so on, and just sort of quite organic organically take these steps forwards within that. Okay, so of course there is commerce in San Miguel. There's a lot of IN cults as well, but it doesn't ever seem to be quite driven by that. It seems to be driven by sort of values-based cult uh sort of values-based cultural paradigm with behind which there is cult behind which there is commerce rather than the other round.

Greg Gunter 11:09

It's interesting because I I think of us as a provincial. We're only 150,000 people, so I I think of us as kind of a little more provincial, a little more grounded kind of community. And one of my favorite artists from my childhood is Norman Rockwell. And we think of San Miguel as a very Norman Rockwell-esque kind of environment. Very grounded, very family-oriented, very friendly, very culturally and community-oriented, and that's kind of the nurturing sort of environment that we have from an artistic standpoint. It's just, you know, it's imagine Norman Rockwell in Mexico, and boom, here we are. You got it, San Miguel de Allende.

Jon Bonfiglio 11:42

Um, at one point, San Miguel featured in Life Magazine.

Greg Gunter 11:46

Yeah, it's funny, in uh the 1950 issue, or one of the 1950 issues of Life Magazine, the photographer got up on the roof of the Instituto Allende and took a photo of a couple of gringo artists, and they were sketching um, how shall I put this, ladies with very few clothing on. Right. And they talked about this was the artistic life in San Miguel de Allende, living the the high life, living like a king on the $500 month striping. But it was great coverage for Sam Miguel de Allende as early as 1950. Love it. Yeah. Look, guys, Calder, Warhol. Oh wow. That's the one I was talking about.

Jon Bonfiglio 12:27

Greg, I want to thank you as ever. I want to wish you all the best for 2026, and I look forward to continuing the conversations with you throughout throughout the year.

Greg Gunter 12:34

Sounds good, team. We're gonna enjoy lunch now. Join us.