I want to go see this exhibit!!
Jessi Reyes-Murray
Subject: Re: Olmec Art Exhibit, deYoung Museum, San Franicsco, Feb. 19
thru May 8, 2011
Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico at the de Young
Treasures from Mexican National Collections on view at the de Young
February 19 to May 8, 2011
San Francisco, August 2010--Considered the "mother culture" of
Mesoamerica and recognized as America's oldest civilization, the people
known today as the Olmec developed an iconic and sophisticated artistic
style as early as the second millennium BC. The Olmec are best known for
the creation of colossal heads carved from giant boulders that have
fascinated the public and archaeologists alike since they were discovered in
the mid-19th century. The monumental heads remain among ancient America's
most awe-inspiring and beautiful masterpieces today. Olmec: Colossal
Masterworks of Ancient Mexico, featuring over 100 objects drawn primarily
from Mexican national collections with additional loans from over
twenty-five museums, is presented at the de Young Museum February 19 to May
8, 2011. Included in the exhibition are colossal heads, large-scale
thrones, and monumental stelae in addition to precious small-scale vessels,
figures, adornments and masks.
Olmec brings together for the first time new finds and monuments that
have never been seen by American audiences and reveals new scholarship on
Olmec culture and artifacts. Curator Kathleen Berrin explains, "In the
fifteen years since the last Olmec exhibition on American soil,
archaeologists have made amazing finds at key sites in Mexico. Informed by
the most recent scholarship, this sweeping international project brings
together a terrific collection of artworks that paint a vivid portrait of
life in the Olmec heartland."
Exhibition
The pre-Columbian Olmec civilization flourished in the Mexican states of
Veracruz and Tabasco between 1400 and 400 BC, corresponding with the Golden
Age of Greece and the Zhou Dynasty of China. Olmec architects and artists
produced the earliest monumental stone structures and sculptures in North
America, including enormous basalt portrait heads of their rulers weighing
up to twenty-four tons. Examples of large-scale works in the exhibition
include:
· Monument Q (colossal head) from Tres Zapotes--carved from a
distinctive porphyritic basalt and weighing over eight tons, this was the
second colossal head to be discovered at Tres Zapotes.
· Colossal Head 5 from San Lorenzo--discovered in 1946, it was created
using a combination of polishing and fine and rough hammering.
· Stela 1 (female figure) from La Venta--standing over eight feet
tall, the stela presents a surprisingly naturalistic female figure in a
pleated skirt standing in a niche.
· Monuments 7-9 (twin figures and jaguar) from Loma del Zapote-El
Azuzul--a sculptural representation of two young Olmec rulers, twins, paying
homage to a feline-jaguar deity.
Small-scale jadeite objects, which embody the symbolism of sacred and
secular authority among the Olmec, attest to the long-distance exchange of
rare resources that existed as early as 1000 BC, and Olmec artists were
unsurpassed in their ability to work this extremely hard stone with
elementary tools of chert, water and sand. Jadeite highlights on view
include:
· Kunz Axe (votive axe) depicting a supernatural being whose
physical features are drawn from multiple sources in the natural world.
· A massive selection of polished axes from El Manati made from
serpentine, greenstone, and gray, green, black and veined stones.
· Offering 4 (group of sixteen standing figures and celts) from La
Venta, an extraordinary discovery from 1955, is a multiple group of
religious figures engaged in a major ceremonial scene.
· Majestic winged plaque with Maya hieroglyphic text on the verso
dating to 100 BC.
Catalogue
Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico is curated by Kathleen
Berrin, curator in charge of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco, and Virginia M. Fields, senior curator of art
of the ancient Americas at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A fully
illustrated 288-page catalogue edited by Berrin and Fields, with a foreword
by John E. Buchanan, Jr. and Michael Govan, accompanies the exhibition.
Centering on the concept of discovery, this wide-ranging volume presents a
fresh look at Olmec civilization, recapturing the excitement that greeted
the unearthing of the first colossal stone head in the mid-19th century.
Published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, the
catalogue includes essays by: Ann Cyphers, Richard A. Diehl, David C. Grove,
Sara Ladrón de Guevara, Diana Magaloni Kerpel, Christopher A. Pool, and F.
Kent Reilly III. The catalogue is available in the Museum Stores (hardcover
$65; softcover $39.95).
Organization
Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico is organized by the Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in
collaboration with the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las
Artes-Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia de México. The
exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts
and Humanities. The San Francisco production of the exhibition is wholly
funded by and attributed to the Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Traveling
Exhibitions. Prior to the presentation at the de Young, the exhibition is
on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art October 2, 2010, to January
9, 2011.
FAMSF-Mexico Partnership
The Olmec exhibition builds upon a unique and expansive history of
cooperation between the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Mexico.
FAMSF's relations with Mexico, catalyzed by an unexpected and large bequest
of Teotihuacan wall paintings in the late 1970s, have resulted in a series
of collaborative exchange projects, among them the Teotihuacan murals
conservation project and exhibition Teotihuacan: City of the Gods (1993),
Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya (2004), and loans to Mexico of American
paintings, African art and works by Henry Moore. Most recently, FAMSF loaned
15 objects from the Oceanic collection to the exhibition Moana: Cultures of
the Pacific Isles at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
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