Inter Cultura - The Blood of Kings: A New Interpretation of Maya Art

The Blood of Kings: A New Interpretation of Maya Art

The first major exhibition initiated by InterCultura was "The Blood of Kings: A New Interpretation of Maya Art," which opened at the Kimbell Art Museum in 1986. The Blood of Kings exemplified the InterCultura approach in that it was a presentation of ground-breaking scholarship, curated by two of the leaders of the group of scholars that had recently deciphered the Maya script: Linda Schele, of the University of Texas, and Mary Miller, of Yale University. The exhibition demonstrated, through a never-before-assembled collection of ancient Maya art borrowed from sources as diverse as the British Museum and the Government of Honduras, the imperative of an entirely new approach based on the decipherment of the Maya writing system. It revealed the Maya as real individuals - kings, queens, and royal dynasties as blood-thirsty and colorful as their Old World counterparts. The power of the exhibition was critical in the collapse of the old view of the Maya as peaceable mathematicians, and the emergence of the currently accepted picture of the Maya. The catalog remains a landmark addition to Maya scholarship and is widely cited.