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Issue 105 Fall 2008
THE BOMB BLAST
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The Practice + Theory series is sponsored in part by the Frances Dittmer Family Foundation.
This Karuk Basket resembles an acorn flour tray, but it is deeper, and the rich color of maidenhair fern adorns the surface as seen in trays used in men’s gambling games. Courtesy of the Clarke Memorial Museum, Eureka, California. Photo: James D. Toms.
Virginia Fields’s success as curator of the Pre-Columbian collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is the result of a long interest in culture and systems of visual communication. While studying for a Master’s degree in anthropology and archaeology at San Francisco State University, Fields traveled to the University of Texas at Austin for a weekend workshop in Mayan hieroglyphic writing. She was captivated by the ancient writing system as well as by Linda Schele, a scholar on the cutting edge of Maya hieroglyphic decipherment whose contagious enthusiasm and passion for the field extended to Maya art. Fields entered U.T.’s Ph.D. program in Latin American Studies in the mid-1980s. Her timing could not have been better. The early ’80s represented a watershed in Maya hieroglyphic decipherment. Little was known of the nature of Maya writing until the ’80s, when international collaborative efforts on the part of linguists, epigraphers, and iconographers greatly accelerated the process. Lively debates over the meaning of symbols resulted in announcements of new “readings” on almost a weekly basis. Since then, more than 90 percent of the known texts have been deciphered and integrated into the social and political models being generated by archaeologists and anthropologists. Equally significant, as more became known of the ancient Maya, contemporary Maya ritual and belief systems were better understood as extensions of ancient practice.
Virginia Fields has been involved in many “blockbuster” exhibitions that present the art and culture of ancient Mesoamerica. Breathtaking objects, sometimes over 3,000 years old, compel the viewer to wonder about the spiritual and practical needs of these cultures. At the same time, many of the ancient motifs and practices embedded in the objects find their voice in ritual practice and belief systems of contemporary Latin American indigenous cultures. We cannot help but feel a resonance with our own culture, and ask questions about how we as contemporary people construct, either consciously or unconsciously, our relationship to the world around us. What is our worldview and how is our universe reflected in utilitarian objects or objects and practices that we hold sacred? By crafting such thought-provoking exhibitions, Fields draws attention to a basic and important aspect of human behavior. Bridges of understanding between one culture and another are built. One wonders if such “blockbuster” exhibitions should be referred to as “bridge-builder” exhibitions.
My interview with Virginia Fields occurred on a Sunday in August 2006 in Santa Fe. We had both traveled to New Mexico to attend a memorial service for Luis Jimenez, a contemporary Chicano artist and teacher well known for his ability to combine contemporary media and popular culture with imagery derived from the Pre-Columbian and Colonial past.
