A curated monthly dose of lifestyle, culture, and rhythm from San Miguel de Allende.
From 1902 textile factory to San Miguel’s arts district under one roof: the history of Fábrica La Aurora, our favorite galleries and tables inside it, how to spend the perfect afternoon there, and why this Saturday’s summer party is the one to catch.
Before it was galleries, it was cloth. Fábrica La Aurora opened in 1902 at the end of Calzada de la Aurora, and for nearly ninety years its looms turned out percale, muslin, and flannel, the workaday fabrics of Mexican life. At its height it employed more than 300 people, the largest employer San Miguel had, until cheap imports and aging machinery caught up with it and the looms went quiet in 1991. The building sat abandoned for over a decade before Don Francisco Garay and four artists, Christopher Fallon, Mary Rapp, Merry Calderoni, and DeWayne Youts, reopened it in 2004 as a center for art and design. They left the factory alone: the freight scale, the iron columns, the machine marks still on the studio walls. The art moved in; the building never moved out of the way.
Two decades of galleries, studios, and showrooms means you need loyalties, and these are ours. Café de la Aurora for brunch with open-air seating in the heart of the galleries. Mestiz, the woven-sculpture studio of Daniel Valero, very much on the come up: they just dressed the windows of the Hermès boutiques across Mexico for the third year running. Skot Foreman Fine Art for beautiful, famous pieces, and Galería Noyola Fernández (opening a new space August 1st) for finely curated work that won’t destroy a beginner collector’s budget, full of your new favorite artists you haven’t heard of yet. La Buhardilla for antiques you could lose hours in, Rachel Horn Studio for the shopping and interior design inspo, La Santísima Trinidad Tasting Room for a glass from the local viñedo, and Los Conspiradores for a contemporary take on classic Oaxacan food. Geek & Coffee out back for espresso and a chance to touch grass. Honorable mention: the resident ducks.
Run it on a loose clock. Start with brunch at Café de la Aurora, then walk it off at Mestiz while your eyes are still fresh. Hit Skot Foreman Fine Art and Galería Noyola Fernández back to back, big names first, new names second, then slow down inside La Buhardilla, where the antiques do the talking. By now you’ve earned the wine break: La Santísima Trinidad Tasting Room, a pour from the vineyard down the road. Browse Rachel Horn Studio on the way out of the corridors, land at Los Conspiradores for a late Oaxacan lunch, and close with an espresso at Geek & Coffee, ducks along the way, grass underfoot, afternoon officially perfect. It is also almost entirely under cover, which is why La Aurora sits near the top of our rainy day edit when the sky opens up in August.
If you can only come once, come on a first Saturday. Every month, La Aurora throws its Art Walk: galleries open into the evening, openings and live music in the corridors, artists out of their studios and in the crowd. It is the factory at its most alive, and tomorrow’s edition is the one to circle. This Saturday, August 1st, from 5 to 8pm, the monthly Art Walk becomes La Aurora’s traditional summer party, an extended, dressed-up version of the ritual and arguably one of the biggest parties the factory throws all year.
Fábrica La Aurora Summer Party
Saturday, August 1st · 5:00–8:00pm – Free
Calzada de la Aurora s/n, Colonia Aurora
fabricalaaurora.com
A curated monthly dose of lifestyle, culture, and rhythm from San Miguel.
