Lámina N’ of the Codex Porfirio Díaz. Both this codex and the Codex Colombino were featured in La exposición histórico-americana de Madrid (the Historical-American Exposition) in 1892.

UMKC Metadata Librarian Stephanie Porrata recently launched a digital exhibit, “Antigüedades Mexicanas: Antiquities and Nation-Building.” The exhibit provides an in-depth look at two works—the Codex Colombino and the Codex Porfirio Díaz—and their importance to late-19th-century Mexican statecraft. Sean McCue and Buddy Pennington, who work in the Systems & Technology Department of UMKC Libraries, assisted Porrata with exhibit design and accessibility support.

“Antigüedades Mexicanas,” which serves as a complement to the current Nelson-Atkins exhibit “Painted Worlds: Color and Culture in Mesoamerican Art”, opens with important context about La exposición histórico-americana de Madrid (the Historical-American Exposition) that took place in Madrid in 1892 as a celebration of the Fourth Centennial of the Discovery of America. Mexico was among the 18 countries that submitted items to the exposition, and its rooms at the Biblioteca Nacional de España held “more than 18,000 pre-Hispanic, colonial, and nineteenth-century objects,” including the two codices that are the subject of Porrata’s digital exhibit.

Porrata demonstrates how the Codex Colombino and the Codex Porfirio Díaz were reproduced and packaged in such a way as to “[promote] Mexico internationally as a modern nation grounded in an ancient civilization,” often in ways that favored a European audience and “[privileged] scholarly interpretation over Indigenous voices.” The digital exhibit provides insights into President Porfirio Díaz’s use of Mexico’s past to shape the nation’s image on an international stage in the late 1800s. Central to the exhibit is Porrata’s comparison of the codices with the original items. “By examining these differences,” Porrata said, “visitors can see how changes in the reproductions reflect the government’s objectives.” Homenaje á Cristóbal Colón: Antigüedades mexicanas, the facsimile on which Porrata’s exhibit is based, is housed in UMKC’s LaBudde Special Collections.

This digital exhibit is currently in the process of being expanded, and its updates are scheduled for completion by August 31st. New additions will include “an expanded annotated bibliography of relevant sources discussing the historical context of Antigüedades Mexicanas: Laminas, the creation of these and similar facsimiles, and their role in Mexican nation-building.” Porrata also plans to add the other manuscripts found in Antigüedades Mexicanas: Laminas, including the Codex Baranda, Codex Dehesa, Lienzo de Tlaxcala and Relieves de Chiapas.

In addition to this digital exhibit, a graphic exhibit titled Unfolding Mixtec Codices is on display through May 2026 in the Miller Nichols Learning Center Foyer, outside of MNLC 151.

Visitors are invited to contact Porrata at sporrata@umkc.edu with any questions, suggestions, or feedback.

Figural Urn, Zapotec, 500–600 C.E.  Clay and pigment, 25 x 25 x 12 1/2 inches (63.5 x 63.5 x 31.75 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 61-16

UMKC will host a symposium in conjunction with the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art exhibition “Painted Worlds: Color and Culture in Mesoamerican Art.” The event will take place February 5th, 6th, and 7th across locations at both UMKC and the Nelson-Atkins. A full schedule for all three days of events is available here.

On Thursday, February 5th, representatives of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins, and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art will gather at the Atkins Auditorium for a pre-symposium lecture and discussion about new projects that will challenge traditional art, historical, and museum models, and explore how updating museum architecture can foster new ways of engaging with historical collections. This event is free and open to the public, and attendees can register here.

Two panels—“Color and Materiality in Mesoamerican Art” and “Color, Gender, and Identities in Mesoamerican Art”—will take place on the first official day of the symposium, Friday, February 6th, at UMKC’s Miller Nichols Learning Center, and will be followed by a reception and codex facsimile viewing. Day one will conclude with a Schutz Lecture Series keynote talk, “A Gleam in the Forest: Meaning and Material in Maya Color,” by Stephen D. Houston of Brown University.

Day two events will be held in the Atkins Auditorium at the Nelson-Atkins, and will include a panel on “Nature, Materials, and Metaphors,” a keynote from Byron Ellsworth Hamann titled “Jazz Age Maya: Mysteries of a Modern Prehispanic Book in 1930s Kansas City,” and a panel on “Leaving and Returning to Nature: Modern and Contemporary Artistic Practices.” Registration is free and open to the public for both full days of events.

The cover of DH+BH: An Interdisciplinary Collection on Digital Humanities and Book History, recently published by the Illinois Open Publishing Network.

Spencer D. C. Keralis, co-director of the Center for Digital and Public Humanities, co-edited a collection of essays recently published by the Illinois Open Publishing Network. The book, DH+BH: An Interdisciplinary Collection on Digital Humanities and Book History, features eight essays written by fourteen contributors and is available for free online via Publishing Without Walls, a digital scholarly publishing initiative at the University of Illinois.

Keralis and their fellow co-editor Cait Coker, associate professor and curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, gathered writings that examine how digital humanities and book history can be applied to advocacy, activism, and recovery work. “I wanted to create space for folks who often find themselves on the margins of academic disciplines,” Keralis said. “I also wanted to highlight work that demystified and critiqued the essential infrastructure of DH and book history: digital collections, the processes of mass digitization, and the often-hidden labor that supports these systems.”

The collection—which takes its name from a 2022 virtual conference—covers topics such as feminist recovery work, the limitations of representation in digital collections, digital methodologies for the enrichment of book history, and interdisciplinary approaches to book history scholarship.

Lucille H. Douglass, chairperson of the Banneker School Foundation and Historic Site, cuts the ribbon at a ceremony celebrating the restoration of the schoolhouse.

The Banneker School Foundation and Historic Site recently celebrated the completion of the school’s restoration by hosting a ribbon cutting ceremony at the schoolhouse in Parkville, Missouri. Attended by various community members, alumni, and friends, the event celebrated the 140th anniversary of the kilning of the bricks used for the original schoolhouse, and honored the 40 years of work that have made the restoration possible. The Banneker School, named after Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806), an African American mathematician, astronomer, and racial equality advocate, is one of the few remaining one-room schoolhouses west of the Mississippi, and was originally one of just three schools built in Platte County to educate African American children.

Various figures involved in the restoration process shared remarks leading up to the ribbon cutting, including people from DMRTISANS, the Platte County Commission, the City of Parkville, Park University, the Park Hill School District, and the Platte County Historical Society, as well as Missouri State Representative Mike Jones and Missouri State Senator Barbara Washington. The Reverend Randy Sly of St. Therese Catholic Church opened the event with an invocation, and the culminating ribbon cutting and dedication were preceded by a benediction from a Banneker School descendant, the Reverend Atwood Williams of Greater Faith Missionary Baptist Church.

Various attendees at the ribbon cutting ceremony. From left: Sheryl Bierman, Catherine Friends Middleton, Dr. Sandra Enríquez, Maggie Neel, Michael Sprague, Dr. Diane Mutti Burke, Lucille H. Douglas, Dr. David Trowbridge, Carla Barksdale, Dr. Adrian Singletary, and Connie Friends. Dr. Mutti Burke holds a piece of commemorative artwork created for the occasion.

Through support and funding provided by the Kansas City Monuments Coalition and the Mellon Foundation, the Banneker School Foundation and Historic Site has installed ten historic markers, erected an entry sign and shelter at the entrance to the property (with solar-powered security cameras and landscape lighting), engineered an ADA compliance study, surveyed property to the north of the original school, and carried out landscaping and grading of the site. The foundation looks forward to opening the historic schoolhouse’s doors to the community and continuing to honor “the enduring spirit of those who fought for education and equality in Parkville’s history.”

Sancho Panza in the 20th Century, one of six panels that comprise the Don Quixote murals painted by Luis Quintanilla in UMKC’s Haag Hall.

The KCUR podcast A People’s History of Kansas City released an episode this month devoted to the Luis Quintanilla murals in UMKC’s Haag Hall. The murals, which were recently restored by the Spanish fresco restoration specialists Beatriz del Ordi and Iñaki Gárate Llombart, were painted in 1940 by Quintanilla during his brief tenure at UMKC (then the University of Kansas City) while in exile from fascist Spain.

Quintanilla had been appointed by the university’s president Clarence Decker to serve as resident artist, training apprentices and using UKC students, faculty, and staff members as models for the murals. Six large panels comprise the Haag artwork: Don Quixote in the Real World, Sancho Panza in the Real World, Don Quixote in the Ideal World, Sancho Panza in the Ideal World, Don Quixote in the 20th Century, and Sancho Panza in the 20th Century.

The podcast episode covered the history of the murals and of Quintanilla’s activities in Kansas City, featured interviews with UMKC faculty members and the restoration’s principal investigators Viviana Grieco, Ph.D., and Dr. Alberto Villamandos, Ph.D., and detailed the various styles employed by Quintanilla in the murals, including buon fresco, classical Renaissance and Baroque-style painting, a grotesqueness akin to that of Francisco Goya, as well as a modernist rejection of traditional ideas associated with European art.

The restoration is just one of many initiatives made possible by the Kansas City Monuments Coalition, which was created by UMKC after the university was awarded a $4 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. KCMC supports preservation and commemorative organizations across Kansas City, such as the Fort Osage National Historic Site, Missouri Town, and the Wornall-Majors House Museums.

Quintanilla’s murals were also the subject of a recent event on campus, “Making the Imaginary Real: Luis Quintanilla’s Don Quixote Murals.” The event was a lecture featuring Patrick Lenaghan, a scholar at the Hispanic Society of America, and Christine Kierig, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California Berkeley. The lecture covered the challenges faced by artists attempting to illustrate Don Quixote and concluded with a guided tour of the murals.