Normally a very contemporary space, the Art Museum of South Texas has changed things up.
The museum recently added six religious pieces to their Spanish Colonial Gallery, which is the first religious collection in it's history.
"One day I'm not going to be here but what is going to be here are these things and so there has to be some mechanism by which this knowledge that has come to us from our ancestors keeps on going," Doctor Ernesto Lira said.
Lira passed on his by donating a ceremonial tribal headdress from the Amazon.
"When a child is born a dance ensues and they dress up in the highest regalia with the feather works and at the completion of it the name has already been decided by the spirits," Lira said.
The headdress was just one of six new pieces donated to the Spanish Colonial Gallery at The Art Museum of South Texas..
The gallery is a blend of paintings, textiles, silver, stone and pottery that tell the many stories of Pre-Columbian cultures.
"We named our bays and our mountain ranges and our language our food and our religion," Barbara Canales said. "All of those incredible genres are affected by this time period in history."
Canales is the grand-daughter of the gallery's namesake Doctor Clotilde P. Garcia, or known to South Texas as La Doctora.
"She was an incredible humanitarian but she was also a great genealogist, a great lover of history and art," Canales said. "She was a great painter herself."
Canales said the gallery was deliberate from the gate, to the colors of the room, to the state of the art lighting that perfectly illuminates each piece.
"When they walk in there's almost like an ah moment because it is just so beautiful," Canales said.
Whether you are religious or not, Art Museum of South Texas Director Jim Molony said the history shown isn't just a display, but an experience.
"Anytime they need relief or want a little bit of solitude they can come down here to the Art Museum of South Texas and walk in the gallery and find peace," Molony said.
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