The Yale Peabody Museum’s latest traveling exhibition celebrates the rich and diverse artistic traditions of Mexico. Developed by the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Las Artes de Mexico examines over 3,500 years of art and culture and of tradition and change across the broad spectrum of Mexican life, from the ancient worlds of the Mayans and Aztecs to the 20th century works of Miguel Covarrubias and Diego Rivera.

Included are artifacts from over a dozen pre-Columbian cultures that reveal a world of ceremony and celebration, of ritual warfare and the veneration of the dead, along with a selection of material from the Peabody’s own collections.

Moving forward in time, folk portraits and carvings of patron saints eloquently show the merging of Spanish culture, Catholic iconography, and native art after the founding of New Spain in the 1500s, while colorful costumes and glittering fabrics illustrate folk celebrations and other traditional practices that continued through the colonial period.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, social commentary became a hallmark of Mexican art, and this exhibition examines both paintings and works on paper during the development of the modern Mexican state.


Above right: Teotihuacán Mask, A.D. 100 to 600, stone.
Above left: Guadalupe Madonna Santo, 19th Century, wood.

Las Artes de Mexico is shown courtesy of the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tour development by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, Kansas City, Missouri.