Bird Mothers and Feathered Serpents

Currently showing at the Saumel P. Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, Florida, Bird Mothers and Feathered Serpents focuses on mythological beings in art from Oceania and Ancient America using objects from the Harn Museum’s collection. Each object represents a fascinating character – a culture hero, a divinity, or a spirit being. Their attributes and deeds reflect human understanding of the cosmos and played a role in shaping social and cultural ideas for a particular group of people. Oceanic works are from Melanesia, including the Sepik River region, Papuan Gulf, New Britain and New Ireland of Papua New Guinea. Ancient American works are from Mesoamerica, Central America and the Andean region.

Visit the Harn Museum's website.

Seated figural urn  -  Zapotec, Mexico  -  Circa 300-500 AD

Information and image courtesy of the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art

Native American and Pre-Columbian Art Auction

On March 25, auctioneers EVE will present two sales of ancient American art at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. The first, smaller group of lots will highlight the Hopi art collection of Yves Berger, including a compelling range of katsina. The second sale will focus on sculptural and ceramic pre-Columbian art from Mexico to South America.

Visit the official EVE website.

Information and images courtesy of EVE

The Barbier-Mueller Collection at Sotheby's

On March 22 & 23, selections from the exquisite Barbier-Mueller Collection of Pre-Columbian Art will be offered at Sotheby's Paris. Formerly held by the Museu Barbier-Mueller d'Art Precolombí in Barcelona, these masterpieces of ancient American art will now find new homes at auction. Featuring over 300 lots, the sale will offer an astonishing array of works in stone, metal, and ceramic from traditional cultures stretching from Mexico to Peru. A few highlights from the sale can be found below. For complete information on this momentous auction, view the official online catalogue at the Sotheby's website.

Figure of Chalchiuhtlicue, Goddess of Water  -  Aztec, Mexico  -  1300–1521 AD

Female figure with stepped-cross motifs  -  Chupicuaro, Mexico  -  ca. 400 BC

Seated figure  -  Olmec, Mexico  -  900–600 BC

Information and images courtesy of Sotheby's

Le cinquième soleil - Arts du Mexique

The Musée du Président Jacques Chirac is currently presenting an amazing assemblage of ancient Mexican art. Le cinquième soleil - Arts du Mexique showcases more than 150 sculptures, masks, vases and musical instruments representing three thousand years of creation by the Aztec, Olmec, Teotihuacan, Veracruz cultures and others.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Figure depicting the goddess Chalchiutlicue  -  Aztec, Mexico

Hacha  -  Veracruz, Mexico

Incensario depicting an anthropo-zoomorphic being  -  Teotihuacan, Mexico

Butterfly pyxis  -  Teotihuacan, Mexico

Figure  -  Teotihuacan, Mexico

Incensario figure  -  Teotihuacan, Mexico

Male figure  -  Aztec, Mexico

Information and images courtesy of the Musée du Président Jacques Chirac

 

Children of the Plumed Serpent at LACMA

Recent scholarship demonstrates that a confederacy of city-states in southern Mexico, largely dominated by Nahua, Mixtec, and Zapotec nobility, successfully resisted both Aztec and Spanish subjugation. Children of the Plumed Serpent: The Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in Ancient Mexico explores the extraordinary wonders in fresco, codices, polychrome ceramics, gold, turquoise, shell, textiles, and other precious materials that were produced by these confederacies between AD 1200 and 1500, as their influence spread throughout Mesoamerica by means of vast networks of trade and exchange. A ruling class of nobles, or caciques, believing that Quetzalcoatl, the human incarnation of the Plumed Serpent, had founded their royal lineages, called themselves the "Children of the Plumed Serpent"; they resurrected themselves and continued to affect cultural development in Mesoamerica during a dramatic period of social transformation.  On view April 1–July 1, 2012.

View the LACMA website.

Pendant Depicting a Ruler in Ritual Regalia  -  Culture unknown  -  AD 1200–1521

Detail of the Codex Selden  -  Mexico  -  AD 1556–60

 

Images and text courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art