Ancient Maya Art exhibition will arrive in China

Mérida, Yucatán, (June 05, 2021).- Pieces of stone, stucco, shell, paper, bone, and ceramics that tell the story of the ancient Maya sovereigns are part of the exhibition The Visible Word, Mayan hieroglyphic writing that the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) will take to China and Korea in the next few months.

“We are working on an adaptation of this show which premiered in 2019 at the Regional Museum Palacio Canton, located in Merida, Yucatan, so that later an international traveling exhibition back, ” said the director of the exhibition, Bernardo Sarvide.

The intentions of the INAH and the federal Ministry of Culture are to take the sample to China and Korea within a few months.

“We are working so that there is a diplomatic exchange with the Chinese Embassy and then take that type of expression from Mexico to the world,” said Sarvide.

The official is exceptionally happy “because it is the first time that an exhibition created in Yucatán, with local pieces, has gone on an international foray.”

“There were many international exhibitions of the INAH in which the Palacio Cantón Regional Museum has participated with some pieces, but the one that goes to Asia was generated here in Yucatán,” he reiterated.

The Visible Word, Maya hieroglyphic writing is a sample that is currently in the Canton Palace and includes more than 80 pieces that tell stories of the Maya kings such as Uk´uuw Chan Chaahk, Lord of the domain of the Ka´n in Ho´, whose legacy is seen in beautiful glyphs carved into a bone.

“The exhibition presents fragments of our history that the jungle could not destroy and that the inquisitor fire could not burn. Today we can read aloud those pieces of history and recall what we thought was lost,” Jesús Guillermo Kantún Rivera, the exhibition’s curator, explained.

The pieces, which can be enjoyed for another two months in the city of Mérida, are part of the archaeological collection of the Cantón Palace Museum and come from archaeological ruins such as Ek Balam, Oxkintok, Mayapán or Uxmal, among others.

The Maya hieroglyphs were made of various materials and objects, the collection includes a number of ceramic bowls.

The facsimile of the Dresden Codex, which was written on amate paper and polychrome stucco, belongs to the Site Museum of the Chichén Itzá archaeological zone, and it is one of the most popular pieces in the show.

Source: La Jornada Maya