The exhibition\u2019s compactness only amplifies its impact as one finds an unhurried occasion for intimate face time with the visages and accoutrements of such Maya entities as Rattle in the Form of a Female Figure and Male Figure with Headdress.<\/p>\n
Whistle Figurine of a Seated Dwarf, museum signage informs, may have come from the Mexican state of Campeche in the Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula. Three rosettes on the figurine\u2019s turban show traces of Maya blue. Applications of the pigment that have become fragmented over time have done so due to the slow erosion of the limestone, earthenware, or other support surface. Indeed, Maya blue is a uniquely stable pigment that doesn\u2019t fade or degrade despite centuries of exposure in a harsh tropical environment; it also resists acids and alkalines. Some believe that such turbaned figures as the little person shown here were scribes, \u201cspecialists in written knowledge and divinatory reckoning.\u201d<\/p>\n Remnants of Maya blue pigment can also be seen on Effigy Censer, a figurine whose ear flares were once covered with the color. The pigment was applied in stripes on the personage\u2019s headdress. The censer figure may, scholars believe, evoke the blessings of a bountiful harvest, as \u201cthe accordion-folded ornaments on his headdress are often worn by deities of rain and flowing water in several Mesoamerican traditions.\u201d Anthropologist and longtime Maya blue researcher Dean E. Arnold observes in his 2024 book, Maya Blue: Unlocking the Mysteries of an Ancient Pigment<\/a>, that the pigment was often ritually produced \u201cas an offering to the rain god Chaak,\u201d according the pigment a \u201csacred status.\u201d The two long fangs of the Effigy Censer suggest a supernatural being.<\/p>\n Whistle in the Form of a Woman with Child and Seated Female Figure both feature remnants of the blue pigment on the figures\u2019 skirts. The facial stippling and the forehead ornament of the woman with child are said to be Maya ideals of\u00a0 beauty. Figurines such as the seated figure were often interred in burial tombs.<\/p>\n Maya Blue: Ancient Color, New Visions also includes four greenstone, or jade, pieces depicting male figures with elaborate headdresses. One is identified as the head of a priest. The word for jade in Maya hieroglyphics is yax tun, which means blue-green stone. While the shades of Maya blue that are probably most often associated with the term range from a brilliant turquoise to a sumptuous azure, Arnold notes that it can also be green or bluish-green.\u00a0<\/p>\n The pigment was first \u201cdiscovered\u201d at the Maya archeological site of Chich\u00e9n Itz\u00e1 by chemist H. E. Merwin in 1931. In time, it was given the name Maya blue and found to be a mixture of indigo and a special clay called palygorskite, sometimes with copal incense (from tree sap) added to the mix. \u201cUnlike other ancient pigments,\u201d writes Arnold, \u201cMaya Blue is not organic or inorganic\u2026.Rather, [it] consists of both an organic component [indigo] and an inorganic component [palygorskite] combined into a single hybrid material\u2026. Now considered the first ever nanostructured artificial organic-inorganic hybrid material, its exceptional stability has inspired much research for designing new such materials. It is one of the world\u2019s most unusual pigments.\u201d<\/p>\n While musing upon the mien of the Maya figures, museum visitors are soothed and stirred by the flute and storm sounds of the soundtrack for Clarissa Tossin\u2019s 2017 video, Ch\u2019u Mayaa, which plays in a nearly 18-minute loop on the museum wall. Filmed in Los Angeles at Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s 1921 Mayan Revival style Hollyhock House, the work\u2019s purpose, Tossin stated in a 2019 Radcliffe Institute lecture, was to reappropriate the building \u201cas a temple, imbuing it with a dance performance based on gestures and postures found in ancient Mayan pottery and murals.\u201d In this way, the artist continued, the home, now owned by the City of Los Angeles, could be \u201cresignified as belonging to the Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerican architectural lineage.\u201d Ch\u2019u Mayaa, Tossin added, \u201cmeans \u2018Maya Blue\u2019 in K\u2019iche\u2019, one of the Mayan languages spoken in L.A. today.\u201d<\/p>\n Choreographer and performer Crystal Sep\u00falveda engages with the Mayan Revival residence, wearing a leopard print unitard, turquoise sneakers, and, at times, a diaphanous shift colored for the sun and a Maya blue sky. Her features mirror many of the countenances seen in the ancient artworks on display. As Tossin noted, the dancer moves like a Maya figure come to life. At one point in the video, her hands and arms dance an inadvertent duet with a dart-stop, dart-stop lizard moving across the architectural exterior. In another, as she retreats backwards into a portal, the vanishing blue of her shift echoes the fragmented blue of the garments worn by the ancient figurines. Ch\u2019u Mayaa is captivating.<\/p>\n Sandy Rodriguez<\/a>\u2018s 2019 hand-processed watercolor on Amate paper, Healer No. 1: Treatment for romadizo, a viral infection of the upper respiratory, speaks to Maya blue\u2019s medicinal traditions. Dean E. Arnold writes that both palygorskite and indigo \u201chad a variety of healing properties,\u201d as did copal resin. Rodriguez\u2019s watercolor depicts the contemporary application of dew drops, which, exhibition signage details, \u201cwas used in mixtures for curing respiratory illness in newborns.\u201d Rodriguez, who created the Maya blue pigment for the dew drops herself, found the healing method in the Florentine Codex. The Amate paper utilized in the painting is made in Puebla from barks and spices by\u00a0 multigenerational Otomi families. After the arrival of conquistadors, production of the paper had been outlawed.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2023.7.78_front_20230524-600x586.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cWhistle Figurine of a Seated Dwarf,\u201d Mexico, A.D. 600\u2013800, earthenware, 7 \u00d7 4 1\/2 \u00d7 3 inches. San Antonio Museum of Art, gift of John and Kathi Oppenheimer, 2023.7.78<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2023.7.1_censer_front_20250417-470x620.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cEffigy Censer,\u201d probable Belize, Guatemala, or Mexico, A.D. 1300\u20131450, earthenware, 15 1\/2 \u00d7 8 1\/2 \u00d7 6 1\/2 inches. San Antonio Museum of Art, gift of John and Kathi Oppenheimer, 2023.7.1<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2023.7.74_front_20230524-2-455x620.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cSeated Female Figure,\u201d Mexico, A.D. 600\u2013900, earthenware, 8 1\/4 \u00d7 4 \u00d7 3 3\/8 inches. San Antonio Museum of Art, gift of John and Kathi Oppenheimer, 2023.7.74<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2002.24.4_head_priest_maya_20201124-579x620.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cHead of a Priest,\u201d Mexico, ca. A.D. 600\u2013900, jade, 2 3\/8 x 1 3\/4 inches. San Antonio Museum of Art, The D. Joseph Judge, M.D. Collection donated by the Judge Family, 2002.24.4<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Tossin-video-still-3-600x338.jpg\")
<\/a>Clarissa Tossin, \u201cCh\u2019u Mayaa\u201d (still), 2017, HD single-channel digital video, color, stereo sound, 17:56 minutes. Smith College Museum of Art, SC 2018.60.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/L.2025.4_-briseno_20250424-475x620.jpg\")
<\/a>Rolando Brise\u00f1o, \u201cVerdeazul,\u201d 1998, oil and pigment<\/p>\n