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54 K ahlo, Rivera, and countrymen are having a major moment in Texas. Just as "México 1900 – 1950" wraps up an attendance-busting run at the Dallas Museum of Art (through July 16), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, unfurls its own bold vision of that apocryphal time with "Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910 – 1950" (through October 1). The timing of this exhibition and its bookend in Dallas is not lost on anyone who has been on either side of the current conversation about the border and its proposed wall. The history lesson is conveyed via 175 masterworks primarily assembled from public and private collections in the U.S. and Mexico, comprising the largest, and most in-depth, look at Mexican modern art ever presented by the MFAH. Houston is the final stop of a cross-border tour that began last October, co-or- ganized through a U.S./Mexico collaboration between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. At the MFAH, Latin American curator Mari Carmen Ramírez oversees its presentation, which is arranged chronologically through five thematic sections: Modernism and "Mexicanidad," Paint the Revolution, In the City, Paint America, and In Times of War. The viewer encounters dramatic paintings, as well as three iconic murals by the grand trio of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, digitally staged as gallery projections. Graphics of the era, searing woodcut and lithographic prints, document the plight of the people and mirror the uprisings of the period. Rare ephemera including books, newspapers, and broadsheets also make the era of sociopolitical upheaval come alive; these are some of the most powerful images exemplifying art as activism created within the 20th century, bearing loaded messages that fueled the revolution. As is often the case with a blockbuster, both major and overlooked players of art history get their day, leading to a textured presentation that may result in a rewriting of the canon. Besides the aforementioned trinity of muralists, the cult of Frida Kahlo is represented by three works, including the exquisite, eerily topical Self-Portrait on the Border Line between Mexico and the United States, 1932. Borrowed from a private collec- tion in Manhattan, it shows Frida in pink dress, literally straddling dual cultures and towering above both in a Surrealist reimag- ining of border politics. Getting their due are Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo), Miguel Covarrubias, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, Carlos Mérida, and Roberto Montenegro, the latter represented by a 1926 oil on canvas of Mayan women, on loan from MoMA, signaling a new way of depicting the role of women in Mexican society as well as in the concept of mexicanidad, promulgating a national aesthetic that embraced and rever- enced indigenous people and the Mayan and Aztec heritage. A loan from Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City features the seminal canvas Mexico City, 1949, little known to most Americans, by Juan O'Gorman, which lays out the modernization and the trans- formation of the capital city at mid-century, painted by a talent who was both an artist and architect. Mexico's most notable lensmen, Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Tina Modotti, represented by a cache of works, underscore the role avant-garde photography played in this time of ferment. In our era, where artists are kidnapped by the marketplace or seen as eccentric outsiders, "Paint the Revolution" returns the dialogue to painters as prophets and agents of change — front and center, or even driving the resistance. And that is a good and authentic place to be. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COLLECTION MARÍA AND MANUEL REYERO, NYC; © 2017 BANCO DE MÉXICO DIEGO RIVERA FRIDA KAHLO MUSEUMS TRUST, MEXICO CITY / ARS, NYC. COLLECTION LACMA; © 2017 BANCO DE MÉXICO DIEGO RIVERA FRIDA KAHLO MUSEUMS TRUST, MEXICO CITY / ARS, NYC. COLLECTION MUSEO DE ARTE MODERNO, INBA, MEXICO CITY; © 2017 ARS, NYC / SOMAAP, MEXICO CITY. MEXICO ZEITGEIST CATHERINE D. ANSPON GAZES SOUTH OF THE BORDER AS WHAT'S BILLED AS THE ULTIMATE BLOCKBUSTER OF MEXICAN MODERNISM, "PAINT THE REVOLUTION," LANDS AT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON. On view at the MFAH, clockwise from above: Frida Kahlo's Self-Portrait on the Border Line between Mexico and the United States, 1932; Diego Rivera's Still Life with Bread and Fruit, 1917; Juan O'Gorman's Mexico City, 1949.