Maya Museum Research Paper

Words: 1167
Pages: 5

The Staggering Mayan Stela Museums are notorious for being places of learning. They offer students and regular people an opportunity to explore other cultures through art, artifacts, ect. As an assignment for this International art class, we were given the opportunity to visit a museum. The assignment serves as a way for students to implement what we have learned in this course.
Having fifteen museums a couple miles away made this assignment a breeze. I headed over to Balboa Park, a cultural hub, to explore our course content in one of their prestigious museums. I strolled into the Museum of Man on a cloudy Sunday afternoon on November 15th. I knew I wanted to visit this museum because I had been there before and I knew they had two exhibits that would be perfect for this assignment. From briefly scanning the museum I could see they offered a couple non-western cultures to study. The museum had Mayan, Egypt, and Kumeyaay art/artifacts on display. They have a beautiful exhibit called, “Ancient Egypt” and an equally amazing “Maya: Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth” exhibit. I debated for a while as to which one I would write this paper about and finally landed on the Mayan exhibit.
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This was kind of disappointing. I would love to know if the original “Stela E” has ever been outside of Quirigua, Guatemala. There was also a big mention of the Mayan gods within the exhibit, which made me wonder about the rationalization behind the incorporation of their Gods. I have always wondered if they saw their Gods as real creatures or representations of spirits. Since their Gods seem to be more naturalistic (water god, sun god, death god, earth god, and so on) were they just representing of natural forces? I would love to learn more about the Mayan Gods, but according to the “Maya: Heart of sky, Heart of Earth” exhibit there is limited detailed information on the