#CHAC MOOL DRAWING CODE#

Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path 1993:322, Fig. Iconographic Features: Astronomy Scorpion Avian included are a furry animal, two skeletal dancers, rampant eagle, human ritualist with brazier, scorpion, and dog-like animal. 7:27ĭescription: various iconic elements used at chichen itza.ĭescription: details of fragment from the exterior mural, north wall, temple of the warriors. Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years On The Shaman's Path, 1993:326, Fig. Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya 1990:374, Fig.

#CHAC MOOL DRAWING CODE#

Mathews, The Code of Kings: The Language of Seven Sacred Maya Temples and Tombs 1998:237, Fig. scene shows battle involving captain sun disk and serpent warriors in front of a maya town. 9:19ĭescription: detail of southwest panel of painted mural, upper temple of the jaguar, great ballcourt. Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya 1990:270, Fig. Iconographic Features: Warfare Seat, Bench, Throne Notes: drawing after morris, charlot and morris 1931 9:9ĭescription: fragments of north bench, inner chamber, temple of chak mool, showing multiple warriors seated on jaguar seats. Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya 1990:355, Fig. 9:15ĭescription: panel showing a seated lord dressed as deity and named as cahal.

Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya 1990:363, Fig. 6.40(C1)Ĭlick to view high resolution in a new windowĭescription: various kinship phrases, including from top, a = lintel 3, temple of the 3 lintels b = temple of the one lintel c = lintel 3, monjas d - lintel 3a, monjas Mathews, The Code of Kings: The Language of Seven Sacred Maya Temples and Tombs 1998:243, Fig. That eyes-right corker I’d adored since childhood, leering at the Chinese tomb guardians staring through the sun / In the next gallery back at him: the label notes / He has been “widely exhibited here and abroad” yet now / They know: not some recarving merely of the face / Or prosthetic limb to double for one broken off / One high noon of bloodlust revelry in elder Mexico / But the entire sculpture, made for market, skull to toe: An old con man craning his head over his shoulder.Description: chac mool from south building, great ballcourt, showing figure reclining on his side with legs drawn up and holding a cup. Can it be? The Minneapolis Chacmool, unveiled, is fake. Shortly after his unmasking, a respected poet who had grown up in Minneapolis wrote about the incident in his poem called Father and the Minneapolis Chacmool. For that matter, so does Chac Mool-as a cautionary tale, a bemusing story, his medium literally listed as “Fakes and Forgeries.” Her earrings, by all accounts, are also real and remain in Mia’s collection. She was a board member of the Friends of the Institute and the Junior League, which sponsored the children’s cruise. She was in fact briefly a stewardess for Northwest Airlines during World War II, and her affection for exotic places was genuine. She lived in Honolulu and, after 1964, in La Quinta, California, near Palm Springs. She married three times-Overstreet was the middle man-and died, just last year, as Kitty Laird. Born Katherine Mordaunt in 1919, she went by Kitty. Overstreet was real enough, though her identity changed several times as well. Overstreet…a real airline hostess,” as the caption described her-was promoting the museum’s upcoming “cruise” for Minneapolis schoolchildren, in which she would pose as their airline stewardess-guide. When this photo was taken by a Minneapolis Tribune photographer in December 1949, and run in the newspaper on January 8, 1950, Chac Mool was still very much in good standing-or reclining.

“When I first saw this sculpture in storage many years ago, it seemed almost laughably bad,” she said at the time, “and now it’s hard to believe so many were taken in by it for so long.” Molly Huber, the assistant curator of the renamed Department of African, Oceanic, and Native American Art, included the sculpture in a 2010 exhibition called “In Pursuit of a Masterpiece,” as an instructive counter-example. No one else on staff, over several decades, had reason to be suspicious. The spoiler was the museum’s first curator of what was then called the primitive art department.

Only in the 1970s was his true nature revealed: He was a fake, and not even a good one. Chac Mool now reclines in museum storage.

Chac mool drawing