Divinely 'Human' Female Figures

An array of remarkably well-preserved artifacts from pre-Europeanized Mexico and Peru, the National Museum of Women in the Arts' "Divine and Human: Women in Ancient Mexico and Peru" is a fine archaeological exhibition, elegantly installed and reasonably scholarly. But don't let the sponsorship of three first ladies -- the ones who live in Lima, Mexico City and a few blocks away at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. -- lead you to expect something stuffy. You probably wouldn't want to tour this show with your maiden aunt, let alone a junior high school class.

The "and" in the exhibition's title is no mere conjunction. "Divine and Human" introduces the worldviews of people who didn't separate the celestial and the earthly. These 14 Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations, which flourished variously between 2000 BC and 1500 AD, connected life and death and sex and food and everything. Most of the nearly 400 pieces in the show, which range from hundreds to thousands of years old, are practical as well as cosmological, and many are anatomically explicit. Fruit- and vegetable-shaped decorative ceramics also serve as bottles, sets of human breasts decorate each side of a large pot and many of the female figures include genitals. These objects are not "art" in the modern sense, but they reveal much about the cultures that produced them.

By the museum's long-standing criteria, "Divine and Human" is unprecedented. It's the first show in the institution's 19-year history that does not focus on art actually made by women. (The wall text doesn't discuss who crafted these stone, ceramic and fabric pieces, although it seems likely that they were mostly men.) Still, pre-Columbian American cultures exalted female anatomy with an enthusiasm worthy of such contemporary feminist artists as Judy Chicago. The last time there were so many ceramic vulvas on display at the museum was during that artist's 2002 retrospective, which included her genital-centric "The Dinner Party." There are even a few things here, probably best left undescribed, that surpass Chicago's candor.

The reproductive and erotic imagery -- including the contents of one discreetly located, NC-17-rated display case -- doesn't simply celebrate the propagation of the species. The Andeans and Mesoamericans linked human fecundity with agricultural productivity and also with the cycle of life and death. Corn was more than a staple for the Mesoamericans; it was a god.

In addition to fruitfulness, women were aligned with water, the sea and the moon. Those associations are typical of ancient cultures, but Andeans equated all living things with divine powers of birth and life, so that even lice on a goddess's body represents fertility.

One eerie gallery, partially illuminated by terra-cotta-hued lamps, includes funerary relics and two simulated tombs, whose inner chambers were associated with the womb. (One is based on the crypt of a Moche priestess that was excavated in 1991.) The Aztecs' underworld, ruled by skull-faced goddess Mictecacihuatl and her husband, was related to the bowels. For the people who made these objects, the human body was life, and the world was the human body.

Yet the body's importance did not render it inviolate. Ancient Mesomerican and Andean people were painted, pierced and scarified, and their clay and stone counterparts were decorated with symbolic images. For reasons that remain unclear, but likely were more than cosmetic, their skulls were deliberately deformed by applying weight to them. As in cultures throughout the ancient world, clothing and ornamentation proclaimed social status. But in these lands they also represented a connection with the sacred; Andean women marked themselves with what the exhibition calls "symbols of divine feminine characteristics."

At their most drastic, magical uses of the body included self-mutilation and human sacrifice. "Divine and Human" is less forthcoming about such practices than was "Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya," the bloody-minded show mounted two years ago at the National Gallery of Art. Still, "Divine and Human" acknowledges that being selected to play the part of a goddess was not such a good gig: "These ceremonies usually ended with the women's sacrifice." Peace and harmony could hardly be expected of these deities, some of whom wear vipers around their waists.

Because of the way the artifacts are grouped, identified only by green backdrops for Andean and lavender for Mesoamerican, it's difficult to get a sense of individual cultures or periods. There are a range of techniques and representative styles: Some faces consist of just a few painted-on dots and dashes, while others are three-dimensional and realistically detailed. It would require dogged cross-referencing, however, to determine if these variations are culturally or chronologically significant.

Such distinctions are clearly not the point of "Divine and Human."

Assembled mostly from the holdings of national museums in Lima and Mexico City, the exhibition is designed to highlight affinities, not differences, between the cultural histories of Peru and Mexico. That it does, but bringing the show to Washington (its only U.S. appearance) adds another element: It reminds us how little we know about pre-Columbian cultures in this hemisphere. In fact, archaeologists have recently begun to upgrade the status of women in these civilizations, based on recent discoveries. In another decade or two, a sequel may well be in order.

DIVINE AND HUMAN: WOMEN IN ANCIENT MEXICO AND PERU Through May 28 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Ave. NW. 202-783-5000. Open Monday-Saturday 10 to 5, Sundays noon to 5. $8, students and ages 60 and older $6.

Public programs associated with the exhibit include:

May 6 from 2 to 3 "Malinche and Her Sisters: Worship of the Great Female Mountains of Ancient Mexico." A lecture on the formative practices of female mountain worship. Reservations recommended. $8, $6 ages 60 and older and students. 202-783-7370 or e-mail reservations@nmwa.org.

May 7 from 1 to 4 A Celebration of Crafts. Hands-on exploration of the craft traditions of Mexico and Peru. Ages 6-12 accompanied by an adult. Free; no reservations required.