Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Through Jan. 2

Many exhibitions about the Maya revel in “the more sensational aspects of ritual and sacrifice” associated with the Meso-American empire, said Peter Simek in D Magazine. This one provides a different view, focusing on discoveries that shed light on the sea’s important role in Maya mythology. “A culture nearly surrounded by water,” the Maya occupied a peninsula flanked on the east by the Caribbean and on the west by the Gulf of Mexico. It was only about 20 years ago, however, that the Maya glyph for “sea” was decoded, allowing scholars to recognize the watery symbolism that links this show’s artifacts. In works ranging from temple facades to tiny figurines, the rain god Chahk is represented “in stylized scenes that show the water cycle associated with death and rebirth.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The 90 works here, “some recently excavated and many never exhibited before in the United States,” are full of surprises, said Gaile Robinson in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. One series of relief carvings shows a king undertaking a long journey to the sea. Another, commissioned by the No. 1 wife of a king on the day of his coronation, “shows her having pierced her tongue with a stingray spine.” Her blood runs onto bark paper, which she burns, and from the smoke the rain god emerges. One more compelling work is “a national treasure from Belize, a 10-pound jade head of the jester god, which is so important to the nation’s heritage that it is depicted on its money.” It’s certainly a showstopper—yet this and several other works here “seem to have little connection to water.” Though the craftsmanship poured into these treasures can be astonishing, “the aqueous connection is almost vaporous at times.”