Indigenous Americas

Art of the Indigenous Americas. Rex Koontz, Chair

Rebecca Archer, University of Houston (MA Student)

The Maya Seated Lord at the MFAH

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s (MFAH) Seated Lord from a Relief Panel is an enigmatic object that has fascinated scholars for decades. The style and material of the unprovenienced sculpture indicates a Palenque origin, yet the panel is replete with Teotihuacan iconography, uncharacteristic of the site. The seated figure, donning a feather-brimmed headdress, impersonates God L, an underworld deity that rarely appears in Classic Maya sculptural arts. Seated Lord’s modern history is equally fascinating: prior to 1888, Seated Lord was part of a larger tri-figure relief, which was broken into several parts. The Museo Nacional de Antropología acquired the erroneously named “Jonuta Panel” before 1888, while Seated Lord and other smaller pieces disappeared into U.S. private collections for decades. Seated Lord entered the public eye in 1962 with its acquisition by the museum, but this transaction inspires questions. Who was Higford Griffiths, the Houston-San Antonio-based interior designer who sold the panel to the MFAH, and how did he acquire Seated Lord in the first place?

This talk will attempt to analyze and contextualize Seated Lord’s Teotihuacan—specifically Tlaloc—imagery. The role of God L at Palenque will be addressed as well, suggesting possible connections between the underworld deity and Tlaloc. Upon sufficiently addressing Seated Lord’s iconography, I will discuss the panel’s provenance and its pivotal role in establishing the MFAH’s Ancient American Art collection.

Roxanne Beason, Oklahoma State University MA

Harvest of the First Fruits: How Joan Hill’s Painting Captures the Christianization of Indigenous Ceremony

At first glance, a viewer may not recognize a complex series of historic foreshadowing when viewing Joan Hill’s painting, Harvest of the First Fruits. A young Native American man stand before you with arms outstretched holding wampum belts that allude to the feast before him. A fire is lit and the smoke comes through the foreground in clean, modernist lines, which sets Hill’s work apart from a lot of her contemporaries. This painting not only calls back to the Dorothea Dunn-Influenced flattened style that came out of the Santa Fe Indian School in the earlier part if the 20^th century, but also has Hill’s personal stylizations and references that gives this piece depth rich with personal and cultural reverence. Hill’s Harvest of the First Fruits gives audiences a look into what Lee Irwin calls “ethnotheology” which he defines as a creative synthesis of Indigenous religious beliefs and practices combined with a various aspects of Christian theology. Not only was this a mode of conversion, but it also helped instill several Christian ideologies such as sin, salvation, reward, punishment, after death as well as moral teachings of kindness and non-violence. This essay will explain how Hill’s intention to depict a man in spiritual embrace pre-European contact is instilled with ethnotheology and foreshadows the fate of Indigenous spirituality.

Katherine Schumann

A Disappearing Elite: Going Underground with the late Zapotec Nobility of Monte Alban, Oaxaca

In Late Classic-period Oaxaca, the noble families of the Zapotec civilization found themselves scrambling to navigate a perilous political landscape: Monte Albán, the great hilltop citadel and central seat of power for the last 1,300 years, was losing its political and economic grip over the Valley of Oaxaca. With its decline, several ruling houses abandoned the capital to lead settlements scattered across the valley floor, engendering a competitive political atmosphere. Those elites that remained at Monte Albán faced similar anxieties: how would they preserve their status and privileges if the city collapsed? Archeological evidence indicates a sharp decline in public monument production during this time— a void that appears to have been filled with the construction of increasingly opulent elite family tombs bedecked with elegant murals, sacred objects, and carved reliefs with themes of genealogy. Instead of placing these grand constructions on public display, Zapotec elites hid them beneath the floors of their palaces. There, they were only viewable by the selective audience that took part in mortuary tomb reentry rituals, an arduous and rare occasion. This placement is puzzling, as Mesoamerican genealogies are usually concerned with establishing legitimacy— a point of utmost importance in any situation of inherited power. The political rivalry and instability during Monte Albán’s decline made public display of legitimacy all the more essential to the retention of high status. So, why hide this art away with the dead? And what can these hidden genealogies reveal about the function of restricted information in the ancient world? My presentation will shed light on these questions by examining the strategic rise of Monte Albán’s elites, and the power invoked by the restriction of spaces and information.