In your next trip to San Miguel (or if you reside there), Sunset Magazine recommends to visit the “Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramírez “El Nigromante”. This art school is a fundamental part of this town, featuring galleries plus dance and art studios.
The renovated murals by Davíd Alfaro Siquieros, a Mexican social realist icon, are a must-see.
In that sense, the website “Experience San Miguel” explains that if studying art is on your San Miguel agenda, head first to “Bellas Artes.” That’s what everyone calls the nicest of art schools in San Miguel de Allende, probably because few want to spit out the entire official name—El Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramírez “El Nigromante”—Bellas Artes.
This place is very special. Only two blocks from the busy Jardín, it’s an oasis of peace and quiet is this noisy town. And it is truly beautiful. You can find art schools and cultural centers in towns and cities all over the world. But not all of them are themselves works of art.
From Cloister to Classrooms
The building was originally constructed in 1755-65 as the cloister area of the Convent of the Immaculate Conception (Las Monjas) The convent was founded by María Josefa Lina de la Canal y Hervás, daughter of one of the most famous of all great San Miguel families, the Canal Family.
The Canal’s old downtown home now houses the Banamex bank, right on the Jardín, and their country estate became the Instituto Allende.
Associated with Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), this former place of prayer and contemplation is now a sort of Church of Art. Drawing and painting, ceramic and weaving, photography, printmaking, music and dance, are some of the classes that you can take there. Besides, you can enjoy gallery exhibitions, a concert hall, and other arts-related activites all year round.
The cafe Las Musas, tucked under the arches of the cloister arcades, is a lovely place to meet a friend, read a book, enjoy a plate of pasta or a cappuccino and just look out onto the patio garden and enjoy the peace that seems to have permeated the very walls.
It’s been called the most ambitiously landscaped cloister in all Mexico, lush as a jungle with 20-foot high bamboo plants, towering poinsettias covered with so many red blooms in season you think they’ll topple over, orange trees, rubber trees, palms and ferns.
Cloister of a former convent, now a public cultural center. Locally known as Bellas Artes, its official name is “Centro Cultural Ignacio Ram?rez, El Nigromante”. Historic Center of San Miguel de Allende, a Unesco World Heritage Site, Guanajuato State, Mexico.
The central fountain with its endearing Lamb of God on top, gurgles a counterpoint to the strain of a violin or piano from one of the rehearsal studios.
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