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Museum features thousands of Day of the Dead items and is open year-round

SAN ANTONIO – Thousands of people visit the Fiesta Store near North Star Mall every year, but many are unaware that hidden on the top floor is an immersive experience that details the history of Dia de los Muertos.

The Day of the Dead Museum features thousands of pieces of art, five rooms and a main gallery dedicated to the holiday.

The owner of the Fiesta Store created the museum when no visitors were allowed inside during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our owner had an extensive collection of art from artists in Mexico, and she thought it would be beneficial to create a public interest in that,” said Luis Pineda, Fiesta Store manager.

MORE: What to know before you attend San Antonio’s free Muertos Fest

The owner of the Fiesta Store collected the items over 30 years and hopes visitors can find beauty in their history.

Pineda said the store has also acquired Dia de los Muertos artifacts from Mexico.

“It’s been in the making for about 15 years,” said Pineda. “To show people what Mexican art is about, not only Fiesta stuff that we have but the actual art that’s been in families for generations. We have probably tens of thousands of different pieces. Some of them are very delicate and very exquisite art.”

The museum also features calaveras, or skulls, altars and displays dedicated to Frida Kahlo and The Virgin Mary. A young woman also sings “La Llorona” at times for visitors in the main space.

“We get a lot of people with teary eyes after it because they remember someone, and it’s a very emotional song,” said Pineda.

Pineda remembers celebrating Dia de los Muertos with his family at Mexican cemeteries. He said he’s seen the holiday become more celebrated throughout the years.

“It’s becoming prevalent. Families that have nothing to do with Mexico or the culture of Mexico are doing altars in their houses,” said Pineda. “They want to involve themselves into the culture because it’s universal.”

And while more people embrace the holiday, Pineda said it’s just as important to know why and the meaning behind it.

“It’s changed over the years from the Aztecs to current generations. Now it’s being celebrated differently than it was before,” said Pineda. “And we show the different steps of how that’s being celebrated over time.”

The Day of the Dead Museum is open year-round. Click here for more information.

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A project like the North Star Solar plot is more likely to be found in the desert.

But on the rural landscape just north of the Twin Cities, a sea of solar panels now covers and area three times the size of Minneapolis' Lake Harriet.

North Star Solar began producing electricity on Wednesday. When it's fully online later this year, it will produce enough energy to power more than 20,000 homes.

The opening marks a big sign of change in outstate Minnesota.

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North Star is the largest single solar energy facility in the Midwest. It was constructed in about six months after the developer spent more than a year negotiating with landowners and acquiring permits.

Xcel Energy will purchase solar power from North Star, and it'll be a big part of a major expansion in solar energy in the state, said Xcel Minnesota President Chris Clark. He likened the expansion to what happened several years ago with wind energy.

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State regulators just approved Xcel's 15-year energy plan to reduce carbon emissions by 60 percent and generate a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

By then, Clark said, at least 8 percent of Xcel's electricity in the Upper Midwest will be generated from solar.

Finding sites for giant facilities like North Star isn't easy.

Although local government officials signed off on it, some neighbors were against it. Barb Holcomb, one of the landowners benefiting financially from the project, says some of her neighbors threatened to stop the project.

"They were very angry because of the traffic and the noise and they wanted to see the wildlife," she said. "They didn't want changes."

But her husband Clifford Holcomb says putting solar panels on land that used to be not very good corn and soybean fields makes a lot more sense.

"There's no money in farming," he said, "not around here, anyway."

While the solar installation is replacing corn and soybean fields, there's still room for native prairie plants under and around the panels that will serve as habitat for bees and other pollinators.

For the Holcombs and some of the other landowners, the North Star project is allowing them to move on from farming at a time in their lives when most other people their age are retired.

Dennis Anderson and his father Phil were the first landowners to sign up.

"He needed something to force him out of farming so that he could finally retire at age 97," Dennis Anderson said of his dad.

The elder Anderson isn't so sure. "I've still got land," he said, smiling.

That aside, Phil Anderson feels proud to know that much of his land will produce local property tax revenue and electricity decades after he's gone.

"I'm glad to live to see the thing completed," he said. "To get a source of energy like the sun for free, that's pretty hard to beat."

Tucked above the sensory overload that is the Fiesta at North Star store is a much more reverent space devoted to Día de los Muertos.

Luis Pineda guesses that there are tens of thousands of individual objects in the second floor space that houses the Día de los Muertos Museum. Those include colorful paper flowers, papel picado, hand-crafted wooden toys and árboles de la vida, elaborate depictions of the tree of life.

There also are dozens of calacas and calaveras, the distinctive Mexican skulls and skeletons identified with Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

“It’s a big, big, big project that we’re still working on year by year and month by month,” said Pineda, operations officer for Soul Heart Hands LLC, which owns the megastore.

Día de los Muertos is observed on Nov. 2. It is rooted in indigenous Mexican beliefs, though it is celebrated across Latin America. On that day, spirits are believed to return to visit with those they left behind and to partake of things they enjoyed during their time on Earth.

Altars to the departed are a key part of the celebration, and so the biggest gallery in the museum is devoted to them. More than a dozen fill the space, including displays devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe and Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

On ExpressNews.com: A Guide to Día de los Muertos events in San Antonio

The museum opened last year shortly after the shop was reopened to the public after being shuttered for about a month at the start of the pandemic. The museum is open year-round.

The shop sells all sorts of goods, including clothing and hand-crafted art pieces. Most of the objects are made in Mexico. The museum takes up about half of the second floor. It is across from a space that will eventually be available for events.

Most of the objects in the museum were acquired on shopping trips for the store and had been in the company’s private gallery, Pineda said. The idea for the museum was to spotlight the work of Mexican artisans as well as some of the history and culture of the country, Pineda said.

“We wanted to show a little bit more about the art, but we wanted to present it in a way that would have a story,” he said. “We picked Día de los Muertos as the best way to explain the art through the history of Mexico because Día de los Muertos goes back thousands of years. It’s a conglomeration of different cultures merging into one. Even today, it’s changing and evolving non-stop.

“I’m sure 10, 20, 30, 100 years from now, it’s going change even more.”

A 10-minute video exploring the holiday’s origins greets visitors in the first gallery. It touches on the indigenous roots of the celebration as well as some of the ways it has evolved over time. That includes the introduction of Catholic elements after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s.

From there, folks make their way through a series small alcoves devoted to different themes. One depicts Jesus on the cross. Another is arrayed as a kitchen in a Mexican household with a simple altar devoted to a loved one who has passed, outfitted with a photo, flowers and pan de muerto, sweet bread made for the holiday. And one is devoted to play, with dozens of hand-crafted toys lining the walls.

On ExpressNews.com: Food Network’s Día de los Muertos series spotlights SA chefs

The biggest space in the museum is devoted to altars. That’s also where a performer in a white dress sometimes walks beside them, singing mournfully of La Llorona, the spirit of a mother doomed to forever walk the Earth, seeking the children she drowned herself. Performances take place every day but Mondays and Wednesdays.

A short video about Mexico plays in the space, as well. “We wanted to show a little bit more because a lot of people say, ‘Oh, Mexico, we don’t know much about it,’ so you want to visually present what there is there,” Pineda said.

The museum has been in the works for a long time. The company had attempted to do something similar at Fiesta On Main, the much smaller shop it owns on Main Avenue north of downtown, said Pineda.

“All this has been 20 years in the making, really,” he said. “We didn’t have enough space at Fiesta On Main. We tried to do something like it there, but it was too small, not enough parking. So the search went on to try to find a better and bigger building. And finally about five years ago, we found this building. It’s perfect.”

Fiesta On Main closed in March of 2020 because of the pandemic and has not reopened. The location across from North Star Mall closed for about a month or so. Employees used that time to install the museum’s exhibits.

The exhibition space still is evolving. QR codes are being added so that visitors can scan them and find more information about the artwork. Because the pandemic remains an issue, the shop is relying on word of mouth rather than advertising to alert potential patrons to the museum.

“Right now, because of COVID, we want to keep it so we won’t have 30 or 40 people up here,” said Pineda. “We want to keep it to 10 or 20, so they can spread out.”

That approach seems to be working.

“Without any advertising, thousands of people have come,” he said.

The Día de los Muertos Museum inside Fiesta at North Star, 102 W. Rector, is open from 9:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays and from 12:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Admission costs $5. Info, diadelosmuertosmuseum.org .

[email protected] | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN