Saint Louis Art Museum Presents Breathtaking Exhibition "Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea"

[Judi Lynn]

Monday, February 14, 2011
Saint Louis Art Museum Presents Breathtaking Exhibition "Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea"



Panel with a king, prince, and warrriors , 667; Piedras Negras, Guatemala; limestone; 25 3/4 x 53 1/2 x 7 1/8 inches; Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology,
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 00-36-20/C2740.; Photograph © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

SAINT LOUIS, MO.- The Saint Louis Art Museum presents Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea, a breathtaking exhibition that showcases more than 90 works of Maya art, many shown for the first time in the United States. The works on view are from Mexico, Belize, Honduras and Guatemala and reveal the ancient Maya people’s powerful fascination with the seas around them. The exhibition is on view from February 13, 2011 to May 8, 2011 in the Main Exhibition Galleries at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

“Fiery Pool marks the first traveling exhibition of Maya art to reach our halls,” said Matthew H. Robb, assistant curator of ancient American and Native American art. “This exhibition offers a dynamic new perspective on the art of the ancient Maya by including everything from monumental stone sculptures to jewels of jade and gold.”
The more than 90 works on view demonstrate the importance that the Maya placed on water, surrounded as they were by the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean and create what New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Holland Cotter calls an “unforgettably dramatic” exhibition. These dazzling images of sea monsters, maritime battles, fish and water deities illustrate the complexity the Maya had long been known for in language, mathematics and culture and illuminate new ways in which this ancient culture viewed the cosmos.

The exhibition’s artifacts encompass the day-to-day as well as the sacred, constructed from gold, clay, stone and shell. They include a conch trumpet, lidded bowls, friezes, incense burners and many other works such as the only known Maya effigy of a lobster and Belize’s prized 10-pound jadeite sculpture of the sun god’s head, entitled Head of a Deity

More:
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=44859