Ancient American Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum
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ART on view Earlier this year, the Saint Louis Art Mu- sewn inaugurated a new installation of ancient American art in its Beaux Arts building, which was designed by Cass Gilbert for the 1904 World's Fair: During the recent construction of the new East Building designed by British architect Sir David Chipperfield, fifty galleries in the Main Building were also renovated and reconfigured. As a result, two additional galleries for the ancient Arneri- can collection were created, allowing for the display of 300 objects. The first major reinstallation of this core col - lection in almost thirty years, the new display presents a survey of the ancient cultures of the Western Hemisphere. The core of this collection- eighty-four percent of it- was assembled in the 1960s by Morton D. "Buster" May, one of the museum's most important donors. While May is justly renowned for his collection of Ger- man expressionist and modern art , it should also be re- membered that his profound interest in the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas established the Saint Louis Art Musewn's status as an encyclopedic musewn of the first order. As a collector in these areas, May's collection is surpassed in its comprehensiveness only by those as- sembled by his contemporaries Jay C. Leff and Nelson A. Rockefeller. Indeed, May purchased his collection from many of the same dealers, especially the late Everett Rassiga. May also sponsored special sales of pre- Columbian art at his May Company department stores in Saint Louis, Denver, and Los Angeles. These exhi- bitions, curated by James Economos and vetted by specialists like H . B. Nicholson and Alan Sawyer, helped disseminate and promote pre-Columbian art across the United States. While many of the objects for sale often were not of museum quality (and were priced accord- ingly), in some cases it seems as though May occassion- ally set prices well above what he thought the market would bear, perhaps in an attempt to create and develop a prestige market. This is especially true of a Classic Maya stela from the site of Naranjo, which May eventu- ally returned ownership of to Guatemala with an agree- ment that it remain on long-term loan to the musewn The Ancient American Installation at the Saint Louis Art Museum ),* &DVH GHYRWHG WR WKH ILJXULQHV RI )RUPDWLYH 3HULRG &HQWUDO 0H[LFR ,PDJH FRXUWHV\ RI WKH 6DLQW /RXLV $UW 0XVHXP 3KRWR E\ :HVOH\ /DZ ), * 1DUDQMR 6WHOD 0D\D 1DUDQMR 3HWHQ 'HSDUWPHQW *XDWHPDOD & $' /LPHVWRQH + HP /HQW E\ WKH 1DWLRQDO 0XVHXP RI $UFKDHRORJ\ DQG (WKQRORJ\ *XDWHPDOD XQGHU WKH DXWKRULW\ RI WKH 0LQLVWU\ RI &X OWXUH DQG 6SRUWV LQY ,PDJH FRXUWHV\ RI WKH 6DLQW /RXLV Art Museum. By Matthew H. Robb and Amy Clark
Transcript of Ancient American Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum
ART on view Earlier this year, the Saint Louis Art Mu-sewn inaugurated a new installation of ancient American art in its Beaux Arts building, which was designed by Cass Gilbert for the 1904 World's Fair: During the recent construction of the new East Building designed by British architect Sir David Chipperfield, fifty galleries in the Main Building were also renovated and reconfigured. As a result, two additional galleries for the ancient Arneri-can collection were created, allowing for the display of 300 objects. The first major reinstallation of this core col -lection in almost thirty years, the new display presents a survey of the ancient cultures of the Western Hemisphere. The core of this collection- eighty-four percent of it-was assembled in the 1960s by Morton D. "Buster" May, one of the museum's most important donors.
While May is justly renowned for his collection of Ger-man expressionist and modern art, it should also be re-membered that his profound interest in the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas established the Saint Louis Art Musewn's status as an encyclopedic musewn of the first order. As a collector in these areas, May's collection is surpassed in its comprehensiveness only by those as-
sembled by his contemporaries Jay C. Leff and Nelson A. Rockefeller. Indeed, May purchased his collection from many of the same dealers, especially the late Everett Rassiga. May also sponsored special sales of pre -Columbian art at his May Company department stores in Saint Louis, Denver, and Los Angeles. These exhi-bitions, curated by James Economos and vetted by specialists like H . B. Nicholson and Alan Sawyer, helped disseminate and promote pre-Columbian art across the United States. While many of the objects for sale often were not of museum quality (and were priced accord-ingly), in some cases it seems as though May occassion-ally set prices well above what he thought the market would bear, perhaps in an attempt to create and develop a prestige market. This is especially true of a Classic Maya stela from the site of Naranjo, which May eventu-ally returned ownership of to Guatemala with an agree-ment that it remain on long-term loan to the musewn
The Ancient American Installation at the
Saint Louis Art Museum
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By Matthew H. Robb and Amy Clark
(fig. 2). As part of the current reinstallation, the staff of the museum worked closely with their counterparts at the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia in Guatemala City to renew the loan and develop a collab-orative conservation program. As a result, Nru·anjo Stela 8 is now exhibited in the museum's Sculpture Hall, where it will remain until its retw-n to Guatemala in 2015.
When May collected the work of Max Beckmann, he made a point to purchase paintings from all phases of the artist's career. Although May's sw-viving correspondence is laconic on the subject of an overall goal for his pre-Columbian collection, the wide-ranging collection of Mesoamerican art he assembled suggests May had a sim-ilar purpose in mind. The installation begins with an en-tire case devoted to the figurines of Formative Period Central Mexico (drawn lru·gely from the collection of George Pepper) installed in the manner of Miguel Co-varrubias' famous "family tree" of figurine types (fig. 1). A fragment of a mw·al from the Techinantitla compound of Teotihuacan (fig. 3) , a Classic Period Maya glyphic column (fig. 5), and an Aztec sculpture ofEhecatl-Quet-zalcoatl cruTying a sack of maize (fig. 4) complete a brief introductory section. The display continues in an adja-cent gallery with a presentation of other ceramic and stone objects from Teotihuacan. Among the former is an exceptional example of a so-called "host" figurine once in the collection of Robert Woods Bliss (fig. 6). Among the latter is a stone figure of Huehueteotl, the Old God (fig. 7) , which, while of a type common in Mexican museums, is rarely seen elsewhere. Rarer still is an assemblage of fifty-eight obsidian miniatures that are quite similar to
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the large-scale offerings recently excavated from the Pyramid of the Moon.
Nearby, eighteen fragments from a Zapotec architec-tural frieze preside over a large case of objects from West Mexico, Oaxaca, Veracruz, and the Maya. Compre-hensive conservation treatment of a Nayarit house model revealed a richly painted roof and base under a layer of grime (fig. 8) . Similar efforts revealed the elegance of Early Classic Zapotec grayware vessels (fig. 9). A masterpiece of painted Classic Maya pottery depicting the ballgame (fig. 10) is placed near a case of Classic Ver-acruz yokes, hachas, and palmas (figs. 11 and 12). Postclassic Mesoamerica is also well represented, from a monumental Huastec female figw·e pmchased by May from Julius Carlebach (fig. 13) to the breathtaking precision of an Aztec teocuitlacuauhtentetl, or gold eagle lip plug (fig. 14), which is placed along-side several obsidian labrets, or itztentetls.
As part of the overall expansion project, the mu-seum commissioned British sculptor Andy Goldswor-thy to create a site-specific work for a sunken terrace formed by the connection between the existing 1904 building and the new East Building. The result is Stone Sea, a multifaceted work of rut that evokes the geologic history of Missomi with its use of locally quanied lime-stone. Its colossal physical presence prompts considera-tion of equally massive temporal scales, making its twenty-three overlapping and tightly contained ru·ches an ideal and monumental setting for the North Ameri-can section of the galleries.
A large portion of one gallery is devoted to ancient North America and the Mississippian culture that dominated the Midwest and Southeast from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries. Drawing on the museum's permanent collection as well as local public institutions and private collections, this section is one of the few places in the region-indeed, the country-where museum visitors can see the aesthetic achievements of artists from places like Cahokia presented along-side their counterpru·ts from other areas of the Western Hemisphere. A set of eight copper plaques found in Dun-klin County, Missouri, in 1906, on loan from the Mildred Lane Kem-per Art Museum at Washington
SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM
University in Saint Louis, ru·e displayed together for the first time. Also on view for the first time is the recently acquired "Vessel with Incised Motifs," representing a cat monster or underwater panther, a creature with traits of a panther and snake that inhabited the under-world realm (fig. 15). Found in western Kentucky in 1954, the Tolu Figurine (fig. 16) is a masterpiece carved from fluorite, a material typically reserved for small beads and pendants. This rare figurine depicts a seated male with a fully carved underside and a distinct yellow streak extending across one eye. Objects cru·ved from flint clay are represented by two remru·kably similru· ob-jects, a kneeling male figurine and a pipe in the form of a chunkey player. Sourced to a specific location south of St. Louis, flint clay objects are believed to have been crafted at Cahokia during the twelfth century. Other highlights of the Mississippian component ru·e a variety of lithic material, delicately carved shell gorgets (fig. 17) , and cer3lllic vessels in the form of full- figured fe-males (fig. 18) and human heads, including a "Vessel in the Form of a Head" that was once in the famed Ed-wru·d W Payne Collection (fig. 19).
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