Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 27, 2002|Volume 31, Number 4

The original Bonampak murals depicted detailed scenes of life in the ancient Maya culture.

Murals at Peabody open 'window' on Maya culture

A meticulously hand-painted reconstruction of 1,200-year-old murals revealing how the ancient Mayans lived at the end of their splendor is featured in the Peabody Museum of Natural History's new exhibit "The Maya Murals of Bonampak: Windows on an Ancient Culture," which opens on Thursday, Oct. 3.

The most complete mural series of the ancient Americas, the Bonampak murals are also considered the most important. The murals decorated three rooms of an ancient Maya temple. The exhibit features the reconstruction of the mural in the first room of the temple and reproductions of reconstructions of the remaining two murals. Many objects from the museum's own collections are incorporated as well, providing a window onto a world whose "collapse" would soon lead to abandoned cities and the end of elite society in the region.

Located within the deep tropical rainforest of the state of Chiapas in Mexico, the ancient Maya site of Bonampak is home to the original murals. These three murals first came to modern attention in 1946, when the Lacandon Maya who lived in the region showed photographer and Yale alumnus Giles Healey '24 what they had not previously shared with any outsider: a small temple whose three rooms were covered with paintings. Dated to about A.D. 800, these paintings reveal details of Maya life toward the end of the society, depicting the ancient peoples as they engaged in court rituals and human sacrifice, wore elegant costumes and stripped the clothing from fallen captives, acknowledged foreign nobles and received abundant tribute.

No other surviving work features as many figures in the life of the court, from second-tier warriors presenting captives to the king to the king's mother pushed to the side by her imperious daughter-in-law, according to exhibit organizers. Costumes, musical instruments and the weapons of war are all rendered with great detail, they add.

Rough sketches made at the site during the 1940s have formed the basis for almost all study of the murals. Concerned about the continued deterioration of the murals in the rainforest environment, Mary Miller, the Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art at Yale, established the Bonampak Documentation Project in 1995. The principal goal of the project was to document the paintings using infrared film, which revealed details invisible to the naked eye. Funded by the National Geographic Committee on Exploration and Research and the Getty Foundation, the project team recorded every scrap of paint within the three narrow chambers in 1996. Back in New Haven, Miller and her students began to assemble and study the data. In the fall of 1999 archaeological artist Heather Hurst joined the team to begin a hand-painted reconstruction that would incorporate all the data sets into a single large-format work. The reconstructions, at 50% their actual size and nearly 30 feet long, were completed in about two years, with the assistance of painter Leonard Ashby.

Two talks on the murals will address their significance and the reconstruction process. On Friday, Oct. 11, at noon, Michael Coe, professor emeritus of anthropology and curator emeritus of anthropology at the Peabody Museum, will speak on "Bonampak: A Spectacular View into the Mayan Past." This talk at the museum is free with museum admission or membership.

On Sunday, Nov. 17, Miller will give a gallery talk titled "Reconstructing the Splendid Maya Murals of Bonampak." Participation in this program, part of the museum's O.C. Marsh lecture series and accompanied by a brunch, requires pre-registration and a fee. For more information, call Melanie Brigockas at (203) 432-5099.

The Peabody Museum, 170 Whitney Ave., is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission to the museum is $5 for adults and $3 for seniors and children ages 3-15. Museum members, Yale I.D. holders and children under age three are free. For more information, call the info-tape at (203) 432-5050 or visit the museum's website at www.peabody.yale.edu.

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