Tell Me a Story: Summer of Urns

Yesterday was a Symphony Sushi/MFA Day. Art and veggie tempura – two great ways to get me outta my head. The museum has a show of pics and concert posters from the late '60s right now and I was MEGA psyched to see it.

On the way to the Summer of Love exhibit, Joe and I came upon a BRILL collection of funeral urns. They’re Mayan and date from between the 650th and 850th centuries. The more I read about these wild pieces the more intrigued I am.

There’s about ten of these urns, all of which were donated by one dude – John B. Fulling.

In the 1960’s John developed an interest in Mayan art, so just like Indiana Jones, off he went into the jungles of Guatemala, with guides and guns, to accumulate one of the largest collections of Mayan art in North America. (source)

Supposedly he purchased The Novemeber Collection, as it’s called, through Guatemalan “dealers” and was unaware of its origins – that it was stolen swag. Yeah sure. Winky, winky and all that.

Why did Fulling donate his entire collection all at once? Tax breaks? Felt others should see these amazing pieces too? Just got tired of dusting them? OR did some of the urn's former inahbitants come back from the dead to exact revenge, all Tales From the Crypt-like? Hey, that could SO happen! Right?

An aside: I want my eventual ashes stored in an awesome sculpture like one of these!

Moving along, we came on the single, ONLY room that housed the crammed together collection of incredible posters and pics from the late ‘60s. Whoever hung the posters had to be either nine feet tall OR completely uninterested in whether the paying public could actually view the damn things. I’d have needed a ladder to get a decent look at the top two rows and, of course, none was supplied.

Still, I got to see Victor Moscoso’s Sopwith Camel, Bonnie MacLean’s Eric Burden and The Animals and Martin Sharp’s Dylan poster. BRILLIANT!

I was really hoping for an exhibit more along the lines of the Günther Kieser show I was lucky enough to catch on my last visit with Della and Martin. Now that was one well laid out exhibit. All posters were hung at human, not giant, eye level and there was more than six inches of space between each one. Gosh, it was almost like the museum folk actually understood that people would want to see the work. Huh.