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Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. There are 100 rarely seen Maya masterpieces in recent discoveries tracing the history of Maya Gods on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's called Lives of the God's, Divinity in Maya Art, the first major exhibition of Maya art in the United States in more than a decade.

This landmark exhibition includes the work of Maya artists who lived in what is now considered Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, many of whom depicted the gods in magnificent towering sculptures, jade, shell, and obsidian ornaments, and ceramic drinking vessels. The artifacts illustrate the gods from infancy through death and sometimes rebirth, too. While the artists live between 250 and 900 A.D., Maya culture is still celebrated today.

The exhibition also includes video of young dancers in the town of Santa Cruz, Verapaz, Guatemala, performing the Dance of the Macaws, a mythical story about older parents, their daughter, and an invading warrior. Today, we're joined by the exhibition's curators, Joanne Pillsbury is the Andrall E. Pearson Curator of Ancient American Art in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Met. Joanne, thanks for being with us.

Joanne Pillsbury: Thank you for having us.

Alison Stewart: Laura Filloy Nadal is the associate curator also in the Rockefeller Wing at the Met. Laura, nice to meet you.

Laura Filloy Nadal: Thank you, Alison, for having us today.

Alison Stewart: Oswaldo Chinchilla is an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University. Oswaldo, hello.

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Joanne, what questions does this particular exhibition hope to answer or address about Maya beliefs and Maya gods?

Joanne Pillsbury: Well, it's a very exciting moment for this field. We have benefited enormously from some tremendously exciting discoveries in archeology, in art history, but also epigraphy, the study of Maya glyphs. We have been very fortunate to have new insights into Maya history, Maya beliefs, and Maya artists as well. The exhibition takes on some very fundamental questions that artists in any time and any place must face, which is, how do you visualize the divine? How do you depict the gods? Then furthermore, how do these extraordinary objects play a part in the devotional practices of the classic Maya?

Alison Stewart: Laura, so much of the press around the show mentions that this is a first of its kind in a long time. Can you share some of the reasons why it has been a long time for a show like this to be in the United States and some of the challenges of putting on a show like this?

Laura Filloy Nadal: Well, the challenges are many, and they're related of why this is an exhibition that it's rare, because first you have to have an idea, and then you have to get the objects in order to tell stories about these wonderful objects. This is a challenging project because we have objects coming from different places located in, I don't know, maybe museums in Mexico and Guatemala, but also far away in Europe and all through United States. You have to think that there's a lot of investment of a lot of people working and exchanging ideas before you can bring these wonderful objects to New York.

Alison Stewart: Oswaldo, I'm going to bring you in the conversation, and please, correct me if I'm wrong about any dates or facts. The Maya originated 1500 B.C. How do these pieces reflect what's referred to as the classic period of Maya civilization?

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos: Well, we have an outstanding sample of ancient Maya art objects. Now, I should say that the term classic can be debated. I mean, it reflects an old-fashioned way of thinking that privileges that period between, say, 250 and 900 A.D. as the height of Maya civilization. Now, we know that even before that date, there were great developments going on, and certainly after the abandonment of some Maya cities around 900 A.D., there were still many important developments going on.

Alison Stewart: What's an example for people, just so they can understand?

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos: Some of the greatest Maya cities, many people probably know the city of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan. That's actually a very late site that developed right after, during the transition when many other Maya cities were being abandoned.

Alison Stewart: Joanne, the exhibition is organized into seven sections. Would you share what the seven sections are?

Joanne Pillsbury: Yes. The seven sections are creations. They're the struggles that led to the creation of the world. Then, moving into day, the creation of the day. The other side of day, of course, is the night, and then a section on rain and maize. The Maya themselves would tell you they had 8,000 gods, the maize God, the rain God, those were universal gods, and they were venerated across time and across place. Then, the penultimate section is on knowledge and passing down knowledge from generation to generation and the importance of ancestral knowledge for resilience.

Then, the final section is on the patron gods, some of the very local gods that were very close to the royal houses. The Maya region was never unified, so it's not like the Aztec Empire. The Maya region was made up of city states that were at times allied, and at times they were against each other. What we see in the finals section are these spectacular monumental works that show the very close relationship between monarchs and divine power.

Alison Stewart: Oswaldo, since the first section is creation, how would you describe the creation process in Maya culture,

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos: As a struggle. I mean, there's no fixed idea of how to make the world happen, how to make it inhabitable for people. The gods start thinking about it and making trials and errors. Some of their first trials are unsuccessful. Then, they shift gears and do a totally different thing. For example, this happens in the Popol Vuh, the 16th century book that contains a very important account of Maya mythology when they try to create people using different materials until finally they find maize, which is the right substance.

Alison Stewart: Laura, in the exhibition, there's the Sun God and the God of Rain and the Maize God, as we were just discussing, how would you describe the relationship between the Maya people and their gods?

Laura Filloy Nadal: I think they engage in different relations depending on the God. For the Maya, the rain God, Chaac, was a powerful God. He was the one that gave water to humanity. He was in charge of letting other, like the vegetation to grow and people to live, but as well he can be very dangerous. They have this relationship of continuing communication between them and the gods. There were like relationships of giving and having. It's really interesting that you care for them and they are going to care for you.

That's as well what is going to happen with the maize God. The maize God is tender, is young, and sometimes it's fragile. You have to care from him. He's like a baby. He's very, very-- he needs a lot of care. You are going to see the Maya taking care of him, but also the partners, his partners, other divine persons who are taking care of them. I think they are really humans, in a way of saying.

Alison Stewart: We are discussing Lives of the God's, Divinity in Maya Art, it is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until April, 2. My guests are Joanne Pillsbury, Laura Filloy Nadal, and Oswaldo Chinchilla. Oswaldo, so many of these artifacts, how are artifacts like this, how do they remain preserved? I know it sounds like a simplistic question, but I'm very curious.

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos: Because they were deposited in places where they would not break, basically. These are objects that originated from burials or ritual deposits that we call caches. Then, of course, then there are sculptures, larger sculptures, which were part of buildings and were found perhaps among the rubble of the buildings, or sometimes still in the places where they were set up originally.

Alison Stewart: Laura, are there any pieces from the show that you knew you had to have to be able to tell the complete story? You just knew you had to have this be part of this exhibition?

Laura Filloy Nadal: Yes, and that's challenging because then you have to go into different--

Alison Stewart: I'm going to bring Joanne to this because she's laughing as well. Joanne, you get to answer that next.

Laura Filloy Nadal: Yes. Then, as a curator, you want one object in the show because you can tell a lot of stories about that specific object. Then, you have to see how you can bring that object to the museum. You have to have an extended dialogue with all the people in the museums, because you need to have conservators around you so that they are going to tell you which conditions you need to have for having that object in the exhibition.

You have to have all the architects planning around how to make the cases, bring the objects in the better way, and then all the other administrations, administrative people that work together. Well, suddenly you have your wishing list, and then you say, "Okay, I'm very pleased. I have this huge stela weighing more than 9,000 pounds, that it's coming to the museum." That big monolith is going to allow us to tell a lot of stories around one special place, Calakmul, the city of the Kingdom of the Serpent.

Alison Stewart: Joanne, a question for you. A piece you knew you really wanted to have in the show for the editorial identity of the show.

Joanne Pillsbury: The reason I think I was laughing is we're curators, so we want it all [laughs]. The challenges, how do you make the selections? That process itself is both fascinating and intellectually stimulating and also immensely pleasurable. The conversations with Oswaldo, the conversations with Laura, the conversations with our colleagues in Mexico and Guatemala. It really is one of the thrilling projects of my life, to talk about these things and discover new aspects that reveal stories that I don't think we knew completely.

This is a very exciting opportunity for us. Nearly half of the objects in the exhibition have never before been seen in the United States, and many of them have been excavated in the last decade or so. It's been thrilling. It was thrilling to see them in Mexico and Guatemala, but it was also so thrilling to see them here at the Met and see the relationships between the different works in the exhibition and how that leads to new understandings.

Alison Stewart: Oswaldo, as an anthropologist, what's an important piece of this show so that the editorial vision is a success?

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos: Well, that's a hard question, but as Joanne and Laura know very well, I'm especially fond of having here stela 25 from the site of Izapa in the Pacific coast of Chiapas in southern Mexico, because that's a sculpture that has an extraordinary representation, that shows-- For several reasons, it's a favorite of many authors have commented on it, have published drawings or reproductions of that sculpture in their books, but very few have seen it. It's rarely seen. The local museum where it is stored has been closed for several years. It was really, I think, a great hit of the exhibition to be able to bring it here, to take excellent photographs that were missing, publish them, and make it available for researchers and for the public.

Alison Stewart: Laura, how do some of the cultural beliefs that we will learn about in this exhibition, Maya beliefs in this exhibition, how are they connected to life today?

Laura Filloy Nadal: That's a great question [laughs], and it's nice to have the chance of speaking about it. We have a lot of information from the objects, and we have archaeological information. We have data from this wonderful book that Oswaldo mentioned, the Popul Vuh, that was written in the 16th century that passed through generations and generations through oral history.

We have the communities, the live communities, that are thrilling and living today, and that they are still conserving all their knowledge about the ancient beliefs. Maybe they are transformed, maybe they are applied in other ways, but you can see them all around the local communities. You have the languages. We have Maya language that has 30 variants that go deep into the Classic Maya, but also we have all the dances at [unintelligible 00:16:09] dancers, but also the clothes. all the traditional clothes they are using. You can find some roots of these designs and the materials and the color that they are using as a community affiliation that you can trace them back to the Classic Maya. It's everywhere.

Alison Stewart: I wanted to mention that Oswaldo wrote the introduction for the book, which is quite beautiful for the exhibition. The name of the exhibition is Lives of the God's, Divinity in Maya Art. It is at the Museum of Metro House Museum of Art until April, 2. My guests have been Joanne Pillsbury, Laura Filloy Nadal, and Oswaldo Chinchilla. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Laura Filloy Nadal: Thank you.

Joanne Pillsbury: Thank you.

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