Jade in the New World

Abstract

To enjoy the pottery, bronzes, and stone carvings of ancient Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, or Roman culture, an admirer need merely make a pilgrimage to one of the great art museums of the world. Until relatively recent times, however, anyone wishing to study the glorious artifacts of the Inca, Olmec, Mayan, Aztec, or other ancient Central American civilizations generally had to seek them in the slender archeological collections of museums of natural history. Somehow, ancient Central American objects had been apprehended as having anthropological but not aesthetic significance.