The ITESO Clavigero House showcases the splendor of Chapala

Gustavo Abarca, with information from the Cultural Promotion Center

The first references to Lake Chapala as the Chapala Sea come from 16th-century maps. Its dimensions warrant this name, for despite being sheltered by high mountains, from some points it forms a horizon that allows water and sky to merge. The lagoon creates waves like those of the sea and holds within it three islands: Scorpion Island, Small Island, and Mezcala Island.

Chapala has been a must-see destination for travelers, and since the late 19th century, many have worked hard to transform a fishing village into a summer resort for locals and illustrious visitors, such as Porfirio Díaz, who made it his place of rest. Thus, Chapala became so fashionable that it was called the "Mexican Riviera."

The beauty of the lake and its surroundings has been celebrated since ancient times by a legion of writers, foreign and national travelers, and painters and photographers from the most diverse backgrounds.

The exhibition "Sweet Sea, Sea of Lies: Iconography of Chapala," presented at Casa ITESO Clavigero, showcases this variety of graphic and written evidence. Highlights include paintings by Carlos Villaseñor Arriola, José Vizcarra, and Guadalupe Zuno, as well as postcards and photographs by artists such as Winfield Scott, Hugo Breheme, José María Lupercio, Librado García Smarth, and lesser-known photographers like José Edmundo Sánchez and Jesús González Miranda, who compiled an extraordinary record of Chapala over several decades. Among the pieces in the exhibition is a 1766 travel map of the region, signed by its creators.

Also noteworthy is the unpublished material of Dr. Carlos Villaseñor Gutiérrez —son of the painter Carlos Villaseñor Arriola—, an extraordinary amateur photographer who spent the summers with his family in Chapala.

Curated by art historian and researcher Gutierre Aceves Piña, the exhibition is organized into five sections: “The Chroniclers,” “Photogenic Chapala,” “Mezcala,” “Chic Chapala,” and “Chapala and the Muses,” bringing together 199 works from 16 collectors. This collection—the result of reviewing 700 materials, including photographs, postcards, and other objects—offers visitors the opportunity to appreciate how images and texts preserve the memory of the lake and convey personal and collective narratives.

“It was a very selective approach that values each of the pieces, but you bring them together in another context and they tell broader stories […] Heritage, to the extent that it is significant for the community, acquires a privileged place,” Aceves points out, adding that the exhibition offers another layer to heritage value, since it allows “seeing what people saw.”

Regarding the importance of presenting material from Chapala from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Aceves believes that the pieces showcase Chapala's splendor, as they date from the period when "it became an important tourist destination, and villas and hotels emerged. This golden age is important because it is the one that will remain in the collective imagination of Guadalajara."

“It was in that splendor until the sixties, and today we can no longer see ourselves reflected in that mirror,” the curator adds.

Bernardo González Huezo, coordinator of the Casa ITESO Clavigero, points out that the exhibition is just one of the activities promoted by ITESO related to Lake Chapala, since there are Professional Application Projects (PAP) that do fieldwork, an investigation in Mezcala and the nomination of Lake Chapala in the World Monuments Watch 2027 promoted by the Laboratory of Territory, Heritage and Landscape (Labter) of ITESO, among other actions that provide students with an awareness of "the symbolic, cultural and economic importance of Chapala, in addition to the issue of water."

The exhibition will open on Thursday, April 16, at 8:00 p.m., with a lecture given by the essayist, chronicler and "tapatiologist" Juan José Doñán and the essayist and poet Raúl Aceves.

Sweet Sea, Sea of Lies. Iconography of Chapala will remain on display until the first week of August and can be visited Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

The ITESO Clavigero House is located at José Guadalupe Zuno 2083, in the Americana neighborhood.