| GI-50062-09 | Public Programs: America's Historical and Cultural Organizations: Implementation Grants | Peabody Essex Museum, Inc. | Fiery Pool: Maya and the Mythic Sea | 4/1/2009 - 1/31/2011 | $380,000.00 | Daniel | | Finamore | | | | Peabody Essex Museum, Inc. | Salem | MA | 01970-3726 | USA | 2009 | Art History and Criticism | America's Historical and Cultural Organizations: Implementation Grants | Public Programs | 380000 | 0 | 380000 | 0 | Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a catalog, a website, and educational and public programs that will offer new perspectives on the centrality of water in ancient Maya art and culture.
The Peabody Essex Museum requests $400,000 toward the costs of Fiery Pool: Maya and the Mythic Sea, a ground-breaking traveling exhibition, publication, interactive website and suite of school and intergenerational public programs that will present recent scholarship, newly excavated material, and recent advances in epigraphy to a broad general public. This first truly themed exhibition on Maya art and culture will investigate the centrality of water, primarily the sea, to Maya daily life and spiritual beliefs and practices through 90 objects from 10 countries but primarily from those in the Yucatan region of Central America. Objects range in size from small, finely incised precious materials to large-scale stone stela and carved architectural elements up to 11 feet tall. Multi-media interpretive elements will allow visitors to better "read" Maya symbolism, particularly relating to water and water rituals as well as to understand Maya hieroglyphic writing and origin stories. |