Tombs, Temples, and Households: Ancient Mesoamerican Figures and Vessels

This exhibition featured an eclectic group of clay or stone figures and vessels produced sometime between 500 BCE and 1000 CE that were probably associated with tombs, private residences, or ball courts in West, Central, and South Mesoamerica, and the Gulf Coast. It originated as a Spring 2015 project for "Mesoamerican Worlds," an Anthropology course cross-listed with Latin American and Latinx Studies, which focuses on a cultural region that gave the early Americans its largest ceremonial and urban centers, as well as its first writing systems. This project allowed each student in the class to research the sociocultural meanings of one Mesoamerican artifact from the holdings of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center and the Litzenberger collection. Student research on these objects was limited by the constraint that the exact archeological provenance of these objects is mostly unknown. Many of them probably began to circulate in the international art and antiquities market in the first third of the twentieth century. As valuable examples of Mesoamerican material culture, they deserve to be studied by a new generation of specialists, and to be admired and researched by all audiences.

Special thanks to Amy and Bob Litzenberger for their generous loan of objects from their collection, as well as James Mundy, Director, Elizabeth Nogrady, Mellon Coordinator of Academic Programs, and Joann Potter, Registrar, of the Art Center, whose devoted efforts made this exhibition possible. There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.