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.