THE REOPENING.
OF THE MEXICAN AND
“CENTRAL AMERICAN HALL

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THE REOPENING
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AMERICAN HALL

FEBRUARY 25, 1944
THE AMERICAN
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NEW YORK CITY

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CONTENTS

A. PERRY OSBORN, Acting President, the American Museum of Natural

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ARCHIBALD MACLEISH, Librarian of Congress . <7 \ \™

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE

A. E. PARR, Director, the American Museum of Natural History

SCIENCE, ARTS, AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Harry L. SHAPIRO, Chairman of the Department of Anthropology, the

American Museum of Natural History eer

THE CIVILIZATIONS OF MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA

Copyright, 1944, by The American Museum of Natural History. All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission.

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FOREWORD

THE TRUSTEES AND ADMINISTRATION are agreed that it would be
inappropriate to celebrate this seventy-fifth anniversary year of the
Museum with the war in progress. There could be no real zest in an
anniversary when the minds and hearts of all Americans are preoccu-
pied with the grim struggle in which our country is engaged.

The Museum could have made much of this anniversary by recall-
ing to our members and the public generally the great men who have
worked here for the past seventy-five years, the notable achievements
in exploration in all parts of the world, the important scientific
research with the discoveries and truths emanating therefrom, the
important books of science, popular and erudite, written within these
walls, the achievements in education, and the marvelous collections
that have been brought together. The growth of the institution from
its modest beginnings in the Central Park Arsenal to its position and
eminence as a national and international institution could have been
presented in terms of truly noteworthy and romantic achievement, a
characteristic example of American free enterprise. All this must be
left for some future birth year, when peace has come again.

Despite the interruptions of war, the Museum is going ahead, with
the support and backing of thousands of members and friends, and
it is a happy circumstance that in this seventy-fifth anniversary year
the Mexican and Central American Hall could have been reopened to
the public. The hall presents the cultural achievements of the great
pre-Columbian civilization of Middle America in a modern and
appealing setting. It is a real departure from the routine presentation

of vast amounts of material in stereotyped and uniform cases. The
selection of material and its presentation and labeling are imaginative
and attractive. The success of these exhibits gives great promise for
future presentations of the anthropological collections of the Museum
gathered from all parts of the world. The presentation is extremely
timely, since perhaps never before in American history have its
people been so interested in other peoples and their civilizations.
Genuine interest, knowledge, and understanding of cultures differing
from our own are fundamental in the establishment of a new world
order. When other cultures are understood and appreciated, a newly
awakened interest therein will take the place of the usual uninformed
feeling of aloofness and superiority. Anthropology realizes that
people are not superior or inferior, only different, so the Museum,
with its great department devoted to this subject, bears a heavy re-
sponsibility in making this point abundantly clear to uninformed
citizens.

Some fourteen hundred members and friends attended the ceremo-
nies in connection with the opening of the Mexican and Central
American Hall. After greetings from the Mexican Government
delivered by Sr. Don Rafael de la Colina, Minister Resident in Wash-
ington, on behalf of His Excellency Sr. Don Francisco Castillo Najera,
the Mexican Ambassador to the United States, the guests were
addressed by Dr. Archibald MacLeish, the Librarian of Congress, on
the reorientation of American thought from the cultures of Europe to
the early American forms, by Director A. E. Parr on the reasons why
anthropology is an essential part of a natural history museum, and
by Dr. Harry L. Shapiro on the hall itself and the great pre-Colum-
bian civilizations of Mexico and Central America. These addresses
were so stimulating and interesting as to compel publication in the
permanent form of this booklet. I am sure the readers of these three”
addresses will find themselves abundantly repaid.

A. PERRY OSBORN

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE
Archibald MacLeish

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—
—

IT is almost impossible for the living generation to recognize changes
in the history of ideas as they occur. The living generation can recog-
nize intellectual changes in the past, the shifts of attitude which con-
stitute the turning points in the history of ideas, but the changes
which the living accomplish themselves seem to them so natural that
the quality of change is not apparent.

There are, nevertheless, occasions of one sort or another, moments
of crisis and therefore of recognition, when changes in the direction of
ideas become perceptible, as a change in a ship’s course is sometimes
felt at night in the altered movement of the hull against the water,
or in some changed vibration of the ship itself. The time in which we
live is a time for such preceptions—and not least in the American
continent. There are many men, not only in the United States but
elsewhere among the American Republics, who believe, by one sign
or another, that a profound change has already occurred, or is in the
present process of occurring, in the American attitude toward the
whole American experience, historical and prehistorical as well.

During the first three or four hundred years after the discovery—
down, that is to say, to the present generation—the American atti-
tude toward America and toward American prehistory was an attitude
determined by several very simple and very obvious facts. The Euro-
peans who came to America felt themselves at first in a foreign land,
and later in a land which, though not foreign, was not “home” either
—"“home” being eastward across the Atlantic still. What William
Bradford wrote of the little colony at Plymouth could have been writ-

-

ten as well, and would have been understood as well, in the Portu-
guese settlement of Olinda on the Brazilian coast, or in the French
settlement at Acadia, or the British settlement at Jamestown, or at
any other point along the American main. “If they looked behind
them,” wrote Governor Bradford, “there was the mighty ocean which
they had passed, and was now a main barr and goulfe, to separate
them from all the civill parts of the world.” If they looked before
them “what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness,
full of wild beasts, and wild men, and what multituds there might
be of them they knew not . . .” Even Las Casas and Sahagin—even
the Spanish historians of the early settlements who were most friendly
with the Indians—felt themselves foreigners in a foreign land look-
ing back in time upon a past they might labor to understand but
could never share.

Throughout the colonial period, and through the wars of freedom,
and on beyond into the first few generations of independence, the
American nations were part of one body, spiritually, with the Euro-
pean societies from which their settlers came. Throughout this long
period, Americans of European descent did not think of the pre-colo-
nial history of the American continent as “their” history. They
thought of it as a strange and savage and even hostile history with
which they could have no intellectual or emotional commerce. Its
works of art had nothing to say to them. Its myths were not inter-
preters between them and the inexplicable face of nature: Hiawatha
was valued as an image of the mind of Henry Wadsworth Longfel-
low, not as an image of the American past as the Iroquois or the
Algonquins knew that past. American history, read backwards from
the present toward the past, veered off from the American continent
at whatever point in time the ancestors of the particular settlers
had entered that continent but, at the very earliest, at the point when
Europeans first became conscious of it.

The point of attachment, the point of anchorage, of all American
perceptions about America during this long period was a European
point. And the European attachment, the European tether, did not
only limit and halter American thinking and feeling about American
prehistory. It haltered and tethered also the feeling of the European

8

Americans about their own American history, their own experience of
America. Because the point of reference was a European point for
each American community, and because, moreover, it was a differ-
ent point in Europe for different communities, it was assumed that
there was no American experience common to them all—that there
were merely a number of experiences of America by a number of dif-
ferent racial and cultural groups. The fact that these experiences
were almost precisely the same experiences for all the American col-
onies and nations—the fact that the experience of the American con-
tinent as a whole was a common experience to a degree unparalleled
in any other continent—was completely obscured by the fact that the
peoples of the American nations saw the American experience, not
with their own eyes, but in the reflection of the differing European
mirrors in which they all continued, generation after generation, to
observe their American world.

To the Spanish-speaking peoples of America, the discovery of the
continent, the feeling out of the coasts, the penetration of the har-
bors, the first settlements between the surf and the silence, the wars
with the Indians, the advancing frontier, the colonial experience, the
infection of the idea of freedom, the wars of freedom—all these were
aspects of the Spanish experience of America. To the English-speak-
ing Americans, the same history, the same experiences precisely—
the same events in the same order on the same earth—were reflec-
tions of the English experience of America. And so in the fragments
of the American history of the French, and the Dutch, and the Scan-
dinavians, and the others. There was in fact a common American
experience such as men in equal numbers, and scattered over an
area of equal size, have never before known in the world’s history. Yet
it did not seem to the Americans to be a common experience because
those who endured it and survived it and built their futures out of it
saw it in the mirrors of European language and European culture and
European preconception in which they were obliged to look—not,
like Perseus, for their own protection, but by the habit of their birth.

It is precisely this dependence upon the European mirror which
now seems to many of us in the countries of America to be changing,
and to be changing in such a manner as to produce a profound alter-

9

ation, a basic reorientation, in the posture of ideas. It has become
fashionable among intellectuals who pride themselves on their sophis-
tication to deprecate any discussion of the recognition of common
cultural and spiritual interests in the Americas as rhetoric inspired
by the current foreign policy of the United States. One can under-
stand suspicion of rhetoric no matter how evoked or in what cause.
But it is not only possible, it is quite probable, that those who dismiss
all discussion of the changed American attitude about America as a
mere vapor of rhetoric given off by the Good Neighbor Policy are
permitting their sophistication to blind their preceptions.

If a relation of cause and effect exists between a change in politi-
cal policy and an alteration in the basic conceptions of a hemisphere,
it is the alteration in conceptions and not the change of policy which
must be assumed to play the causative rdle. If a relation of cause and
effect exists, in other words, it is the changed American attitude
toward the American experience which has made the Good Neighbor
Policy feasible rather than the Good Neighbor Policy which has pro-
duced the change in attitude. Had there not been an underlying modi-
fication of the picture of themselves and of their history which Amer-
icans of all the American nations accept as true, the Good Neighbor
Policy could not have been enunciated, much less realized in prac-
tice. In an American hemisphere which saw itself in the terms which
obtained throughout the American continent fifty years ago, or even
twenty-five years ago, the enunciation of any such policy as the Good
Neighbor Policy would have been an act of the utmost political futil-
ity, and not merely because the methods of North American commer-
cial expansion had created suspicions of the good faith of the United
States throughout the rest of the American continent, but because the
fundamental common assumptions upon which any such statement
of policy must stand were altogether lacking. What has changed in
our time is not so much the expressed intention of the Government of
the United States toward the hemisphere, as the attitude of the Amer-
ican peoples toward their continent and themselves, which means
toward the history of the continent on which they live.

Why this change has come about is in one sense easy, and in an-
other sense difficult, to say. It is easy to see that the European mirrors

10

have been broken—or, better, tossed away. It is not altogether clear
whether the mirrors have been tossed away because of a declining
European authority, moral and spiritual—a declining authority re-
lated in some way and in some measure to the collapse of Europe
before the attack of Fascism—or whether the reason must be looked
for elsewhere. What is certain, however, is that the mirrors are gone.
The proof of that is before us in many things but most notoriously
perhaps in the American reaction to the effort of European phalanxes,
or European propagandists, or European dictators, to put the mirrors
back in our hands. To the American mind throughout the American
continent there is something grotesquely anachronistic and even
absurd in the solemn conspiracies of organized gangs in European
countries to make America again a spiritual dominion of Europe—
to reduce the nations of the American continent to the moral or
spiritual authority of European states or powers.

The belief of men in Europe that they can reconstruct the colonial
mentality in the New World by school boy salutes, secret oaths,
official corruption, and terroristic murder affects most American
minds much as they might be affected by the sight of Don Quixote’s
horse and armor. The New World, as Amerigo Vespucci and the
early map makers understood those words, was, it is true, a place for
crown colonies and spiritual dependencies and the exercise of Europ-
ean dominion. But the New World, as those words are understood in
the American continent today, is not an area on a map in which
European colonies can be planted or dependencies established. It is
a province of the human spirit, in which the prescriptive rights run
only to mankind.

But the absurdities and misadventures of Fascist Europeans, who
do not understand what the New World has become, are merely
proofs and indications of the change. They are not the change itself.
The change, if there be one, is a change as affirmative and creative
as these misadventures and follies are frustrated and negative. The
change is a change in the American acceptance of the American
experience and of the American history as our own. As yet this
acceptance is individual and personal rather than general and notori-
ous: private rather than public. It is found in the individual experi-

11

ences of individual men—experiences of which each man must
speak for himself. And yet the individuals who have made these
personal discoveries are scattered throughout all the American
nations. There are American writers in all the American languages
who have discovered that the ancient history of America is not a
foreign history but a history in some sense their own, and there are
men of all the American cultures who have come to realize, sepa-
rately, and yet together, that there is an American experience and
that it is their experience and that they are part of it.

It is this, I think, that explains in largest part the new importance
of Mexico and of Mexican history and prehistory in the lives of many
individual Americans of the United States. It is sometimes suggested
that the new importance of Mexico in the North American conscious-
ness is a matter of mode or fashion—that the great contemporary
Mexican painters created a vogue for Mexican art and through
Mexican art for Mexican life and the Mexican country. It is true, of
course, that the genius of Rivera and Orozco has exerted a powerful
influence upon the North American mind and imagination. But to
attribute the North American preoccupation with Mexican things
solely to these two or to the music of Chavez—to the work of a hand-
ful of Mexican painters, musicians, and writers—would be to attribute
a greater power to the arts than even the arts can claim.

I can only testify for myself in this matter, but so far as my own
knowledge goes, it seems to me clear that something more general
and more inexplicable than the influence of any artist or any group
of artists is involved. One may intensely admire the work of an artist
and still not feel that the country he presents in paint is in any sense
one’s own, or that its past is a past in which one has any personal
share or concern. And yet it was precisely this I felt when I first saw
Mexico—when I first really saw it, going up on foot and mule-back
from the coast near Vera Cruz over the mountains behind Jalapa, and
through Tlaxcala to the pass between the volcanoes and thus to the
valley of Mexico. It was a country altogether foreign in its altitude,
its clear air, its unmistakable and incommunicable mountains. Yet it
was not a foreign country. It was a country of an antiquity greater—
or so it seemed to me—than the antiquity of Persia. But it was a

i

country of the New World and its antiquity was the antiquity of the
New World, not the old—and therefore mine.

Ten years ago and more I wrote a poem of the Conquest of Mexico
called Conquistador. In a foreword to that poem I wrote these words:
“I hope that the strength of my attachment to the country of Mexico
may to some degree atone for my presumption as an American in writ-
ing of it.” Today I would not write those words. I know very well
why I said what I did, but today I would not say it. Today I would
feel no presumption in writing, in whatever words of admiration, of
Mexico, or of any part of the American continent. For, though I
should not dare to say I felt myself at home, or in my own country,
in any part of the American continent, neither could I say of any
part of it that I felt myself abroad, or in a foreign world, or in a world
with which I could have no commerce or communication.

How many there are in my own country or in the other countries
of the continent who feel as I do, or who would understand my feel-
ing, or who would understand the words in which I try to speak it,
I cannot say. I think there are not few. I think, as the recognition
grows that the mirrors have been laid aside or broken, there will be
more, and many more. But whether I am right or not, I can only bear
witness to my own personal sense of a change in our American per-
ception of ourselves. Which may, perhaps, have consequences as pro-
foundly important and as far reaching as the reorientation of the
European mind which followed the recognition of the existence of
a European culture. But which, in any event, will justify our claim
of right to praise this continent as we praise the things our lives
attach to.

13

SCIENCE, ARTS, AND ANTHROPOLOGY
A. E. Parr

NA

THERE are so many people who wonder what any object of beauty,
wrought by the hands of man, has to do in a natural history museum,
that it seems necessary to say a few words about why even art has
come to be a legitimate part of the natural sciences, before the next
speaker goes on to tell you the ideas and the story behind our new hall.

In the old, but still hale and hearty, tradition of the natural history
museums, man and nature have generally been regarded as mutually
exclusive of each other. Nature exists only where man and his works
are absent. Natural conditions are what you find at the end of trail,
but not what you left behind at the old homestead.

It was Darwin’s theory of the descent of man which first secured
from us a reluctant recognition of the fact that anthropology might
have a legitimate place among the subjects of natural history. To the
extent that man might be related to the apes it seems necessary to
admit the study of man within the precincts of zoological knowledge
and research. We are forced to concede that the Neanderthal bones
must belong among our exhibits, under any definition of a natural
history museum.

Beyond this limited field of undeniable common interest, the union
between anthropology as a whole and the natural sciences in general
has not as yet attained to any great perfection of harmony, but there
is reason to hope that we may finally be on the threshold of a more
mature appreciation of the relationships between nature and man, and
of a greater happiness in the relationship between the sciences dealing
with these two subjects.

14

As anthropological collections and anthropological knowledge
grew and branched out, the representatives of the older museum
sciences of zoology and other natural history subjects behaved very
much like an elderly husband with a young wife who did not turn
out the way he expected her to and whose developing charms he is
therefore unable to appreciate.

When the Cromagnon man was discovered, it was found that this
kindly old soul had not only left his empty skull behind but also a
magnificent artistic expression of the visions which the skull had once
contained. It therefore becomes necessary for us to take the art with
the bones, and art becomes a legitimate, although not cheerfully
accepted, subject of natural history. Gradually the evidence of the
artifacts has become as important as the evidence of the skeletons in
our study of the evolution of man.

But the study of man as a natural history subject cannot be con-
fined to the observation of his prehistoric remains alone. Darwin him-
self had made many references to the characteristics of the primitive
living races in his discussions of man and his relatives. So it became
necessary to include the so-called savage tribes and their works in the
collections and the studies of the natural history museums.

Still, none of this growth of the anthropological subjects seemed
very pleasing to the older branches of museum scholarship. Instead
of seeing in the study of human natural history, which includes all
branches of anthropology, the highest expression and application of
their own sciences, they saw in it mainly a competitor for space and
financial support.

In a certain sense, anthropology has been a losing competitor here
in our own Museum. Our anthropological collections multiplied in
size and in value until they have come to be among the finest and
best in the world. Anthropological research by a brilliant staff greatly
increased the scientific prestige of our entire institution. But when it
came to a question of means for presenting the subject to the public
by the best methods of exhibition it would always seem to have been
a matter of bread and water for anthropology while the rest of the
Museum was living off the fat of the land. We hope and intend that
the reopening tonight of the Hall of Mexican and Central American

a5

Archaeology, in which we have done as much as can be done under
wartime restrictions, will prove the symbol of a new maturity in the
attitude of the Museum toward the problems of man and nature.

In the biological sciences we must forget the frontiers-day defini-
tion of natural conditions, which excludes from our interests and from
our main exhibits any part of nature on which man has left his mark.
We must be ready to recognize man himself as one of the greatest
natural forces of his own environment and in the environment of all
other living things with which we have any real concern. We must
be willing to let our eyes move on from nature as we found it to
nature as we made it and must live with it. Dustbowls, Japanese
beetles, and vanishing fisheries have brought the importance of man-
made nature home to us, while virgin lands have shrunk to insignifi-
cance through the expansion of human influence.

In the anthropological sciences we are finally ready to cast aside
the egotistic distinctions which made the primitive races legitimate
subjects of museum display but kept us from applying the same scien-
tific methods of scrutiny to our own exalted existence. Some day soon
we hope to see in this Museum an anthropological treatment of the
history and the problems of our own civilization, as objective and
instructive as any presentation ever made of the structure of other
cultures. Today we are here to see some of the evidence of a great
culture which died but left its seeds behind to continue their growth
in the rich soil of a new civilization and to bear their bloom in the
colorful artistic tradition of our neighbors to the south.

16

THE CIVILIZATIONS OF MEXICO
AND CENTRAL AMERICA
Harry L. Shapiro

SEVENTY years ago this Museum, soon after its establishment,
received its first collection of Mexican antiquities. Twenty years later,
largely through the efforts of the Duke of Loubat, this modest begin-
ning had grown into a major collection, requiring an entire hall for
its proper housing and exhibition. The fifty years that have elapsed
since the dedication of our first hall of Mexican and Central American
archaeology have witnessed changes in its location and alterations in
its installation. Tonight we are again celebrating its reopening in a
new guise which we owe to the benefaction of one of our trustees.
Thus, this hall, which enjoys the dignity of being one of the most ven-
erable in the annals of the Museum, is also one of the most vigorous
and vital, adapting itself to contemporary demands and reorganizing
its content to fit the advances of archaeological scholarship and
research. This capacity of a great and complex institution to dis-
charge its intellectual duty by keeping its exhibits abreast of modern
knowledge augurs well for its future.

The hall which we are presenting to you this evening represents
an epitome of a great civilization whose seat lay within the area of
Central America and Mexico. In the centuries preceding the arrival
of Columbus and Cortez, this civilization developed and flourished,
now in one part of the region and now in another. But these diverse
expressions, distinguished as they were by their local genius, were
nevertheless united and sustained by a common tradition that reached
back into the antiquity of the region. Just as we differentiate, geo-
graphically and historically, various phases of Western civilization,
recognizing the cultural distinctions as well as the cultural unities of

17

English, French, Italian, and Spanish art, so it is possible to think of
Maya, Toltec, Aztec, and Zapotec as local developments of a basic
community. This common heritage never received a name; it has
none now, largely because the historical connections which establish
its unity have only recently been discovered.

Although scholars are still debating the precise antiquity of man
in the New World, there is little doubt that the Indian immigrants
on their arrival in the Western Hemisphere were endowed with only
a primitive stone culture. Indeed, they probably entered this con-
tinent via Bering Strait at a time when no civilization had yet devel-
oped in the Old World. The most they can be said to have brought
with them were the mere rudiments out of which a civilization might
be forged. These primitive hunters and wanderers, moving south into
the empty New World, gradually occupied and settled it out of their
own increase. In certain places they achieved an agriculture and sed-
entary life made possible by the development of peaceful arts. In
two or three areas at most these settled forms of life evolved into
authentic civilizations. One of these was Middle America, where from
native sources a Civilization arose that reached heights comparing
favorably with the achievements of many of the great traditions of
the Old World.

Thus, the prehistoric civilization of Mexico and Central America,
by its insulation from the civilizations of the Old World, contributed
nothing to them and received nothing from them. It was born from
a primitive fragment of the Old World, and it developed in conti-
nental isolation, cut off by vast seas and great stretches of continent
from all contact with the active centers of civilization in Europe or
Asia. This segregation of the centers of New World culture from the
currents of Old World civilizations confers upon them a special sig-
nificance in the panorama of human experience. It means that here
in prehistoric America new and independent experiments in civiliza-
tion were developing and unfolding in their own fashion and accord-
ing to their own patterns.

Under these circumstances it is to be expected that the great civil-
izations of the New World would exhibit features peculiar to them-
selves and that the idiom of their expression would offer some imped-

18

iments to those accustomed to the dialects of other cultural traditions.
There is, indubitably, much in the arts and customs of the civilized
Indians of pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America that is for-
eign, not to say downright repulsive, to our sensibilities attuned to
other canons of esthetics and behavior. The grotesque funerary urns
of Oaxaca with their crowded symbolic decoration certainly ring no
bell for our conditioned reflexes. The abhorrence of the Mayan artist
for broad undecorated spaces and his itch to fill every nook and cranny
of his monuments with figures and designs seem foreign to our satis-
faction in the balance and relief of emptiness. To our eye, trained, at
least until recently, to delight in the perfection of natural propor-
tions, the apparent disregard of the Mexican artist for realism may
interfere at first with our appreciation of his skill in detail. In fact,
the preoccupation of our esthetic tradition with the human body and
the glorification of its sensuous aspects is completely lacking in pre-
Columbian art, which, on the contrary, tends to treat the body as an
element in a design.

These characteristics illustrate the differences which motivated the
artists of the New World as against those of the Old. They explain
perhaps why Western civilization has found it difficult to under-
stand the essence of this exotic and strange art. For although pre-
Columbian masterpieces have been known to European collectors
for more than four hundred years, they have been prized during this
time only for their rarity, their technical finish, or their value to
scholarship.

One might reasonably ask why it has taken us so long to recog-
nize the virtues of Mexican art, if indeed they are as transcendent as
we are coming to believe. The answer, I think, lies not in the defi-
ciencies of the art but in the eye of the observer. Mexican art had the
misfortune of first coming to the notice of Europe when cultivated
Europeans were thoroughly possessed by the classic tradition. Indeed,
I think I am safe in asserting that the art of Mexico was the first
great esthetic tradition outside the familiar Mediterranean pattern to
challenge the prejudices of modern Europeans who were unable by
education, training, and conviction to accept readily the beauty of an
exotic artistic medium. Only after European taste had become flexible

19

and receptive by acquaintance with the Chinese, the Hindu, and the
African idioms, not to speak of the newly discovered products of long
forgotten Old World cultures, was it ready to appreciate the neglected
riches of prehistoric America.

But aside from esthetic experiences, Middle American civilization
also offers a record of the evolution of culture which is pertinent to
the understanding of civilization wherever it arises. Although the
archaeological history of Middle America is still fragmentary, it is
already possible to discern the outlines of its growth. We know that
man existed in this region for millenia, probably as a simple hunter.
Gradually he developed an agriculture based upon native American
plants, and at the beginning of the Christian era well-established
civilizations were already in their full creative vigor, constructing
temples for their highly organized religious systems, decorating them
with sophisticated art, and producing the manifold amenities of civil-
ized life. We have records of the development and decline of whole
civilizations, such as the Maya, which yield evidence on the factors
and conditions that shape the destiny of a culture. From the same
sources we can trace the influence of one culture upon another, add-
ing thereby to our appreciation of culture dynamics. These results,
still tentative and partial, may eventually contribute profoundly to
our understanding of the problems of culture growth.

In unfolding such an archaeological progress of a civilization, one
of the primary necessities is a chronological frame of reference—a
series of events on a time scale. This fundamental obligation has pre-
occupied the attention of archaeologists for a generation or more.
They have struggled to define the characteristics of each phase of
Middle American culture and have been gradually tying them into a
chronological pattern by which they can relate each phase of culture
growth to all others in the area. The difficulties of such a task are
inconceivably complicated and require much hard, patient, and often
tedious work.

In the absence of historical records, the archaeologist by necessity
has had to develop a method of extracting information from the
excavated rubble of the past. The rewards come as the recovered
pieces of information fall into their allotted places and add another

20

brick to the slowly rising edifice of reconstructed knowledge. The
Museum may justly take pride in the pioneering role which it has
played in this achievement. The chronological sequences which are
displayed in the exhibition hall for the first time are in a large meas-
ure the result of excavations and research by scholars from this insti-
tution.

As one contemplates the various aspects of the civilization we
have been discussing, one cannot, I think, avoid a profound sense
of that community of striving that everywhere characterizes man-
kind. For here, in this exotic culture, with all its peculiarities of style,
the by-products of the human spirit are basically like our own. It is
impressive that without knowledge of the developed arts and of the
achievements of the Old World, these pre-Columbian civilizers, these
craftsmen and artists, created them afresh. The search for economic
stability and fairly constant sources of food led here, as elsewhere, to
the discovery of agricultural techniques, which in turn permitted the
assemblage of population in cities and towns. By virtue of these con-
centrations of people, specialization of labor was made possible, and
technical skills emerged in independent but familiar patterns. The
complexities of social organization and control found tentative solu-
tions here that echo those known to us in the Old World. Here in
Mexico and Central America was evolved an original and noble
architecture, designed to house the gods and the rites of organized
religions. The ineffable need for artistic outlets found esthetic expres-
sions in painting, sculpture, and innumerable minor arts. The crav-
ing of man for an ordered and accepted body of knowledge and belief
found comfort here, too, in a native lore vested in the priesthood. The
members of this body observed eclipses and other natural phenomena,
developed an original calendar, invented the zero before it was known
to Europeans, and recorded much of their knowledge and history in a
written language which has only been partially deciphered. These are
only a few of the developments of civilization which the natives of
Middle America were able to achieve by their own efforts. But they
are enough to illustrate the solid advances for which they were respon-
sible and to confirm the extraordinary parallelism between their
road to civilization and the familiar avenues of the Old World.

21

The Hall of Mexican and Central American Archaeology which
you have been invited to inspect has been designed to serve two
interests: the general and the specific. In two rows of cases flanking
the central aisle of the hall, in the wall cases at either end and in the
foyer of the hall, we have installed the treasures of our collections.
That does not mean that your individual taste might not prefer some
piece tucked away in a less prominent position. In fact, we expect that
your explorations will uncover much of distinction outside the special
cases. But it was our intention to place prominently a selection of fine
representative pieces which might serve to give the visitor a general
impression of the art of the region without distracting him with
analyses. Here is an abundant range of styles and objects, some of
them heavily marked by local convention, others possessing a univer-
sal quality rising above time and place.

In a series of alcoves along one side and elsewhere in the hall, we
have arranged exhibits for more specific interests. Here, various
regional cultures are defined and the time sequences analyzed and
characterized. These, we hope, will prove invaluable for students
studying the history of the region and for the casual visitor whose
fancy has been captured by the more general exhibits.

It will not, I think, be out of place to mention briefly the technical
problems of the hall itself. It has long been an ardent wish of the
Department of Anthropology to house its splendid Mexican and
Central American collections in a setting worthy of their excep-
tional character. At various times ambitious and elaborate plans and
models were created toward that goal, but inexpediency or, more
realistically, lack of funds prevented the accomplishment of these
projects. Meanwhile, the physical aspect of the hall had gradually
deteriorated to such an extent it was felt something must be done
at once, even if the ideal were impossible and the times seemed
unpropitious. That decision was reached a year ago. One of the
trustees, who prefers to be nameless but whose devotion to this hall
is well known, generously provided the necessary support, and the
administration approved the plans. Since this is a period of priorities
and of rationed material, our garment was necessarily cut to fit the
cloth. Although we have been handicapped by these shortages, the

22

results achieved, I think, have well justified the effort. We have used
simple means; we have broken here and there with Museum tradi-
tions in décor; we have completely reinstalled the entire hall. To those
familiar with the older embodiment of it, this newer garb will, I
think, seem revolutionary. We hope you all will enjoy it, but we pre-
sent it to you not as the ultimate hall, not as the most imposing, but
rather as a tentative creation which in the future may be replaced by
a more perfect one.

So many hands and so many minds have cooperated to produce the
final result that it is a matter of considerable satisfaction to me to
point out that this has been a truly joint enterprise. We have profited
from the suggestions and criticisms arising from the various mem-
bers of the staff, from the Director down. To all of these we are in-
debted. The burden of the planning of the hall and of devising the
exhibits has, however, fallen upon Dr. Gordon F. Ekholm, Assistant
Curator in Mexican Archaeology, and Mr. Clarence L. Hay, Research
Associate in the Department of Anthropology. Their unswerving
devotion, their erudition, and their enthusiasm are fittingly embodied
in the hall. To Mr. Victor W. Ronfeldt, Mr. Joseph Guerry, Mr.
Paul Richard, and to Miss Katharine Beneker, upon whose taste and
skill we have leaned heavily, the execution of the installations is
largely due.

It gives me great pleasure also to acknowledge the invaluable
assistance of Mr. René d’Harnoncourt of the Museum of Modern Art,
who installed at very short notice but with his usual consummate
skill, the temporary exhibit of post-Columbian arts and crafts. We
were fortunate in being able to borrow from the collections of Mrs.
Dwight Morrow and Mr. d’Harnoncourt the splendid examples you
will see.

23

hes

inc

Height, 60

1. Stone figure from Costa Rica.

2. Carved stone disc, backing for mosaic mirror, probably from Vera Cruz. Diameter, 6 inches

3. Jade tiger in the La Venta or Olmec style, from Necaxa, Puebla. Height, 33 inches

Height, 434 inches

ing on one end of a stone yoke, from State of Vera Cruz

4, Cary

5. Head in stone, probably from Vera Cruz. Height, 7 inches

Aztec. Height, 20 inches

Corn goddess,

6

7. Effigy vase of “plumbate” ware, from EI Salvador. Height, 7 inches

8. Seated figure in coarse stone, from Oaxaca, Mexico. Height, 914 inches

9. Male figure in coarse lava, from State of Michoacan. Height, 22 inches

10. Head of monkey in black stone, State of Guerrero, Mexico, Height, 51/2 inches

11. Mask of green stone, northern Vera Cruz. Height, 7 inches

12. Head of baked clay, Central Vera Cruz. Height, 444 inches

13. Seated clay figure, Central Vera Cruz. Height, 13 inches

14. Clay figure with elaborate costume, from Chiapas, Mexico. Height, 614 inches

15. Head of Maya corn goddess from Copan, Honduras, limestone. Height, 12 inches

16. Votive axe of green jade, Mexico. Height, 11 inches

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