The most ambitious exhibition ever at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum is remarkable not only because of the age of many of the artifacts in
”Mexico: La Vision del Cosmos,” but also because of the newness of the museum.
In only seven years, this small, community-based museum has produced many exhibitions-of antiquities, traditional arts and modern art-of genuine interest to museumgoers from all over Chicago. Anyone with even a casual interest in mesoamerican archeology will be enchanted by ”The Vision of the Cosmos,” which remains open through May 31.
For an institution of this sort to reach beyond its own community is not at all simple. Chicago has many ethnic museums; few of them are more than curiosities, and some fail utterly at presenting their important story to the outside world.
The Mexican museum is an exception, and the current exhibition raises its own standard even higher. A permanent collection is not on display. Rather, the Mexican museum taps the collections of individuals and other institutions to mount temporary shows about the arts and life of Mexico. For the current exhibition, it has borrowed 158 artifacts from the collections of the Field Museum for what is essentially a ”quincentennial” exhibition inspired, as in other museums, by the passage of 500 years since the arrival in America by Columbus.
Many things are notable in the exhibit. One is that a number of the figurines and stone carvings from ancient America have never before been on display. They have been in the Field Museum`s storage, and some of them for many decades.
Another important aspect of the exhibition is that it truly advances in some small ways the scholarship of mesoamerican archeology. In one section of the gallery, for example, is a collection of pottery from Tlacotepec, an archeological site west of Mexico City. This collection-along with a catalog essay by co-curator Laurene Lambertino-Urquizo-demonstrates that the site contained two distinct styles of pottery. The conclusion is that this valley in the 1400s had two distinct cultures living side by side-an Aztec colony of people from the distant capital, and stubborn natives of the area who refused to be assimilated.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this exhibition is that it provides ample evidence that highly developed cultures evolved in Mexico over a period of 3,000 years. While the symbols and meanings of this art may not be as clear to us as Greek and Roman images, the art is obviously sophisticated and the ideas of their cultures complex.
One could criticize this exhibition. While it points out that ancient Mexican art can be divided into pre-classic, classic and post-classic phases, it does little to show how styles changed over time-through Olmec, Mayan, Toltec, Aztec and other cultures.
But the pieces are strange and beautiful, and as an introduction, perhaps this is enough. What does come through is that these ancient cultures assembled the symbols of their spiritual worlds with almost shocking vividness. Clay figurines of warriors and fertility gods, and stone carvings of animals, are mostly small, but they meet a high standard for art.
”This art is something that we can be very proud of,” says Carlos Totolero, executive director of the museum. Amidst controversies ignited by the Columbian quincentennial (Who discovered whom when Columbus wandered into the New World?), the exhibition demonstrates that a powerful Mexican culture reaches very far back in time.
The exhibit also challenges visitors to discern meanings. We know, for example, that the Mayans had an advanced system of writing. Its complexity is baffling, though the exhibition attempts to explain it.
We also know that many post-classic cultures practiced human sacrifice. But instead of assuming it is barbaric, Totolero and others insist that it reflects a deeply held concept of the cosmos, and the spirituality, of these people.
Such questions run deeply. Frankly, this exhibition is only an introduction to a world that sometimes seems close to us, in other ways inconceivably remote. But it is a finely wrought introduction that ought to inspire artists, students, community members and people who simply like museums to admire a world that was all but destroyed when conquistadors followed Columbus to the New World.
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”Mexico: La Vision del Cosmos: Three Thousand Years of Creativity” runs through May 31 at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, 1852 W. 19th St. The Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is free. For more information, call 312-738-1503.
