Ancient Southwest: Peoples, Pottery and Place / University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
February 21, 2013 – February 14, 2014
Curated by Steve Lekson, this exhibition features more than 100 rarely exhibited ceramics from the museum’s celebrated southwestern collection and takes visitors through more than 1000 years (AD 500-1600) of southwestern history. Photographs of ancient southwestern ruins by noted aerial photographer Adriel Heisey provide a visual and dramatic frame of reference for the exhibition.
Lekson explains, “The striking pottery on display illustrates the remarkable range of Native societies, and their dramatic stories. The exhibit offers a new history of the ancient Southwest based on recent research and new insights.”
With captivating and informative narrative provided by Lekson, the exhibition reduces one thousand years of what Lekson calls, “glorious, messy, and complicated human history,” into a short, coherent, and enjoyable experience that challenges the conventional views of the ancient Southwest.
The exhibition is divided into seven areas representing the primary cultural groups that defined the ancient Southwest: Hohokam, Early Pueblo, Chaco, Mesa Verde, Mimbres, Casas Grandes, and Pueblo. Senior Exhibit Developer Charles Counter explains, “With an entire gallery devoted to a vast display of pottery and images of the limitless Southwest landscape, that has always been a part of the human experience in the Southwest, the exhibition will take visitors through the rises and falls, kings and commoners, war and peace, triumphs and failures of the ancient Southwest.”
CONTACT
Andrea Kaufman Robbins, Public Programs Specialist
andrea.robbins@colorado.edu
Tel. 303.492.3396
University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
Henderson Building 218, UCB
Boulder, Colorado 80309
United States
www.cumuseum.colorado.edu
Above: Tonto Polychrome Jar from a ruin near Solomonsville, AZ. Excavated by a Colorado University expedition in 1931. A gift from to the UCMNH from D. Erdmann in 1985.
