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SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM University in Saint Louis, are displayed together for the first time. Also on view for the first time is the recently acquired “Vessel with Incised Motifs,” representing a cat monster or underwater panther, a creature with traits of a panther and snake that inhabited the underworld realm (fig. 15). Found in western Kentucky in 1954, the Tolu Figurine (fig. 16) is a masterpiece carved from fluorite, a material typically reserved for small beads and pendants. This rare figurine depicts a seated male with a fully carved underside and a distinct yellow streak extending across one eye. Objects carved from flint clay are represented by two remarkably similar objects, a kneeling male figurine and a pipe in the form of a chunkey player. Sourced to a specific location south of St. Louis, flint clay objects are believed to have been crafted at Cahokia during the twelfth century. Other highlights of the Mississippian component are a variety of lithic material, delicately carved shell gorgets (fig. 17), and ceramic vessels in the form of full-figured females (fig. 18) and human heads, including a “Vessel in the Form of a Head” that was once in the famed Edward 77 W. Payne Collection (fig. 19). the large-scale offerings recently excavated from the Pyramid of the Moon. Nearby, eighteen fragments from a Zapotec architectural frieze preside over a large case of objects from West Mexico, Oaxaca, Veracruz, and the Maya. Comprehensive conservation treatment of a Nayarit house model revealed a richly painted roof and base under a layer of grime (fig. 8). Similar efforts revealed the elegance of Early Classic Zapotec grayware vessels (fig. 9). A masterpiece of painted Classic Maya pottery depicting the ballgame (fig. 10) is placed near a case of Classic Veracruz yokes, hachas, and palmas (figs. 11 and 12). Postclassic Mesoamerica is also well represented, from a monumental Huastec female figure purchased by May from Julius Carlebach (fig. 13) to the breathtaking precision of an Aztec teocuitlacuauhtentetl, or gold eagle lip plug (fig. 14), which is placed alongside several obsidian labrets, or itztentetls. As part of the overall expansion project, the museum commissioned British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy to create a site-specific work for a sunken terrace formed by the connection between the existing 1904 building and the new East Building. The result is Stone Sea, a multifaceted work of art that evokes the geologic history of Missouri with its use of locally quarried limestone. Its colossal physical presence prompts consideration of equally massive temporal scales, making its twenty-three overlapping and tightly contained arches an ideal and monumental setting for the North American section of the galleries. A large portion of one gallery is devoted to ancient North America and the Mississippian culture that dominated the Midwest and Southeast from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries. Drawing on the museum’s permanent collection as well as local public institutions and private collections, this section is one of the few places in the region— indeed, the country—where museum visitors can see the aesthetic achievements of artists from places like Cahokia presented alongside their counterparts from other areas of the Western Hemisphere. A set of eight copper plaques found in Dunklin County, Missouri, in 1906, on loan from the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington


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