Resource Spotlight | “The Arts of the Ancient Americas at the Dallas Museum of Art” by Michelle Rich
The Arts of the Ancient Americas at the Dallas Museum of Art
by Michelle Rich
An illustrated compendium of artworks from the ancient Americas. Including Indigenous works from the southwestern United States, Mesoamerica, the Isthmo-Colombian Area, and the Andes of South America, this book showcases more than 100 masterpieces of art from the ancient Americas. These are presented in historical, archaeological, and artistic context with new photography and scholarship. The publication considers ceramics, metalworks, stone carvings, and textiles from an array of America's earliest civilizations, including Ancestral Puebloan, Mexica, Olmec, Maya, Chavín, Inca, Moche, Wari, and more. Highlights include some exceptional rarities, including a Chavín crown with deity figures, a previously undefined style of four-panel Andean tunics, a Mixtec mosaic mask, a Maya lidded tetrapod bowl, and breathtaking gold jewelry from the Isthmo-Colombian Area.
Published by Yale University Press.
A Preview by Steven G. Alpert
The Dallas Museum is a major art destination where one can discover and enjoy masterworks and renowned collections.
An outstanding new publication, The Arts of the Ancient Americas, is the final book in a quartet of recent volumes that include the initial publication of the Arts of Africa (2009), the award-winning Eyes of the Ancestors, the Arts of Island Southeast Asia (2012), The Arts of India, Southeast Asia and the Himalayas (2013) that document the global artworks in the DMA's collection.
This volume, edited and stewarded by Dr. Michelle Rich, the DMA's Curator of the Arts of the Americas, with the addition of contributions from diverse authors, provides the field with an updated text and insightful information. The book is greatly enhanced by the work of DMA's photographer, Brad Flowers. The consistency of his images, many of which are sublime, running cover to cover and throughout this major publication, add to the catalog's overall cohesion and wide-ranging presentation of venerable material from America's Southwest, Mesoamerica, Central, and South America in one scintillating volume.
Mesoamerica is represented in this presentation by outstanding works from the West coast, Puebloan and Mexica, Olmec, and Maya peoples. Ancient artifacts are also celebrated from Chavin, Paracas, Wari, Moche, and Inca cultural horizons spanning some 2,500 years from ca. 1000 BC to 1500 AD. The quality of the best of these items is breathtaking and a paean to human ingenuity and imagination. The sheer volume and wide range of funerary items visually enforced the consanguineous power of the ruling classes and their adherents. The materials described in The Arts of Ancient Americas range from pleasing everyday items to fragments of monumental architecture to regalia that, in life and death, often glorified rulers while supernaturally reaffirming the cosmic order of all things.
There are 3,615 items, or approximately fifteen percent of the museum's total collection, currently being stewarded by the DMA, representing the genius, creativity, and world views of various groups of indigenous Americans. Arts of the Ancient Americans illustrates these items with thoughtful entries and informative text. In this volume, history, context, function, and explanations of the sundry materials employed by ancient Americans, including items fashioned from clay, stone, jade, fiber, gold, copper, and wood, are well described to further frame a mind-boggling array of artifacts.
Some of our favorites include two Olmec masterpieces; the seated jade figure in a ritual pose and a riveting jadeite mask. Speaking of pathos and traveling through time, Dallas' famous Jalisco couple with a man putting his arm around his female counterpart as they gaze off into the distance always delivers. The DMA's remarkable obsidian flint depicting a crocodile as a sky-crossing canoe with passengers is about as refined and sacred as an object can be from any culture or time horizon.
In the realm of textiles, from a perfect Paracas mantle to a boldly abstract red, black, and white checkered Inca tunic are among the special textiles in this collection. Their pristine condition is essential to showing textiles as art as the colors are still rich and the material intact even after many centuries. Several of the finest items, such as repousse gold beakers, mortuary masks, and pectorals, from the famous dealer/collector John Wise's former collection are also showcased. There is just so much to celebrate in this marvelous new addition to the lexicon of The Dallas Museum of Art's tradition of producing fine publications.
— Steven G. Alpert, founder of Art of the Ancestors
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. Art of the Ancestors does not receive a commission should any of our readers purchase the aforementioned book. Art of the Ancestors is a strictly non-commercial educational platform and has no vested interest in the professional activities of the author listed above.