(Originally posted: 3/25/2011)
On March 24, I went to see “Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea” at the St. Louis Art Museum. The exhibit was doing a brisk business, and it had some spectacular artifacts on display. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed in it. As I had feared, the exhibit was more about putting pretty artworks on display than any real attempt to educate about the Maya and their worldview. Click through to the full story for my detailed thoughts.
First, the good points: the exhibit did have some of the most amazing pieces of Maya art I’d seen on display, drawn from all over the Maya world and all throughout the Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic periods. The figurines from Jaina Island, Mexico, were especially impressive, both in their preservation and their presentation. The show was also ordered, showing artifacts with similar ideas and meanings near one another. One moves from artifacts depicting the Maya cosmos, through depictions of supernaturals, to rulers, etc. Every artifact on display has an interpretive plaque on the display that gives a concise description, provenience, date, etc. For a professional archaeologist with a reasonable familiarity with Maya culture and art, there was much to be learned.
Unfortunately, you almost had to be a professional archaeologist to learn much beyond “The Maya made pretty things.”
The walls of the exhibit halls were almost bare; there was a map of the Maya world with major sites marked. Unfortunately, it also had modern national borders on it, giving a false impression that these borders were meaningful in the past. The only real interpretive materials for the artifacts were the small plaques on each display (and the audio tour, which I will address later). These were often mounted on the sides of the display cases that included several artifacts, and were each to miss. Furthermore, some of them could be rather wordy, and I saw many patrons simply looking and moving on without reading.
Maya iconography is frequently bewilderingly complex (to our Western eyes, at least). The plaques for several pieces declared them to be depictions of this or that animal, this or that ruler, and even I could not find the subject among the tangle of motifs and icons. I know that many patrons would have been completely lost. Sometimes there were line drawings on the display that highlighted the central motifs; other times it was left to imagination. Some glyphic writing was interpreted, but much of it was not. My mother, who saw the exhibit with me, was not even aware that certain parts of the images were writing until I told her.
There was also no real indication of the thematic groupings of the artifacts. A non-expert, or even an expert not paying close attention, would likely have thought artifacts were arranged largely randomly. Put simply, there was little attempt to teach, and much more effort put toward making the artifacts aesthetically appealing.
The (partial) exception to this was the iPod audio tour. As one entered the exhibit hall, iPods & headphones were available for free (but only is you left your driver’s license as collateral). The iPods had audio discussions & interviews with experts for selected artifacts. Certain artifacts were numbered; you selected a numbered track on the iPod, a photo of the artifacts appeared, and a brief discussion played. These often included interviews with experts and gave a more anthropological interpretation of the artifact. Someone who listened carefully to the full tour, in order, would have learned more than the patron without the tour. The system worked relatively well, with these caveats: first, I heard several patrons (especially older ones) complaining that the iPods were difficult to use. Second, not every artifact had an audio description, and it was sometimes unclear where the next numbered artifact was. For example, in the second room of the exhibit, I accidentally went backward, from the highest-numbered artifacts to the lowest. The iPod format made this possible, since I could jump to the exact track I wanted, but it also made the audio tour too choppy and disjointed. Rather than a single continuous tour (which would have been best for educational purposes), it was a series of brief descriptions that lacked continuity.
When the “Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand” exhibit of Native North American art was at the St.Louis Art Museum a few years ago, they had odd little devices one punched numbers into, then held to his ear to listen. These were much easier to use, and did not require separate headphones. The spatial ordering of the exhibit also made it much easier to follow the audio tour sequentially. I wonder why they changed systems.
All the shortcomings I’ve mentioned can perhaps be excused because this is, after all, an art museum. It’s job is to display aesthetically pleasing works of art, and education is a secondary goal. On the other hand, I do believe that the exhibit designers could have devoted much more attention to accomplishing both goals simultaneously. The bare walls were especially disappointing. I’d expected large murals of Maya life, signs indicating the exhibit themes, maps illustrating trade and diplomatic connections, etc. (For example, the plaque for one stone relief panel indicated the ruler was “dressed in a Central Mexican Teotihuacan style,” but there was no indication of how or why that was interesting. A single map showing the distance to Teotihuacan would have gone a long way toward doing so.) In short, I suppose, I’d hoped that this exhibit would have taken a stronger cue from the nearby Cahokia Mounds Interpretive Center, where the artifacts themselves are subordinated to the education about the past. “Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand” did a great job of educating while also delighting the eye, and “Fiery Pool,” to my mind, fell short.
I will also be going to Cincinnatti in the next month or two to see the Cleopatra exhibit. I’ll post my feelings on that when I’ve seen it.