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Earlier this year, the Saint Louis Art Museum 74 inaugurated a new installation of ancient American art in its Beaux Arts building, which was designed by Cass Gilbert for the 1904 World’s Fair. During the recent construction of the new East Building designed by British architect Sir David Chipperfield, fifty galleries in the Main Building were also renovated and reconfigured. As a result, two additional galleries for the ancient American collection were created, allowing for the display of 300 objects. The first major reinstallation of this core collection in almost thirty years, the new display presents a survey of the ancient cultures of the Western Hemisphere. The core of this collection—eighty-four percent of it— was assembled in the 1960s by Morton D. “Buster” May, one of the museum’s most important donors. While May is justly renowned for his collection of German expressionist and modern art, it should also be remembered that his profound interest in the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas established the Saint Louis Art Museum’s status as an encyclopedic museum of the first order. As a collector in these areas, May’s collection is surpassed in its comprehensiveness only by those as- The Ancient American Installation at the Saint Louis Art Museum By Matthew H. Robb and Amy Clark ART on view FIG. 1: Case devoted to the figurines of Formative Period Central Mexico. Image courtesy of the Saint Louis Art Museum. Photo by Wesley Law. FIG. 2: Naranjo Stela 8. Maya; Naranjo, Petén Department, Guatemala. C. AD 800. Limestone. H: 200 cm. Lent by the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Guatemala, under the authority of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, inv. #1966.564. Image courtesy of the Saint Louis Art Museum. sembled by his contemporaries Jay C. Leff and Nelson A. Rockefeller. Indeed, May purchased his collection from many of the same dealers, especially the late Everett Rassiga. May also sponsored special sales of pre- Columbian art at his May Company department stores in Saint Louis, Denver, and Los Angeles. These exhibitions, curated by James Economos and vetted by specialists like H. B. Nicholson and Alan Sawyer, helped disseminate and promote pre-Columbian art across the United States. While many of the objects for sale often were not of museum quality (and were priced accordingly), in some cases it seems as though May occassionally set prices well above what he thought the market would bear, perhaps in an attempt to create and develop a prestige market. This is especially true of a Classic Maya stela from the site of Naranjo, which May eventually returned ownership of to Guatemala with an agreement that it remain on long-term loan to the museum


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