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A major private collection of Mesoamerican art named after the mythic Aztec homeland, the Aztlan Collection has been purchased over the last five years by the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame. This purchase adds depth and breadth to the Museum's Late Preclassic (300 B.C.–A.D. 250), Classic (A.D. 250–900) and Post Classic (A.D. 900–1521) holdings with major objects from collections that were assembled around the middle of the last century. Since 1999, funds from the Museum's McDonough, Lake Family, and Humana Foundation Endowments have been used to purchase three other portions of the Aztlan Collection that have strengthened the Olmec, Preclassic and ritual ballgame areas. In 2004 Mr. and Mrs. Anthony J. Unruh provided funds for the final purchase. Because of these patrons' generosity, the Museum now exhibits the most important collection of Olmec sculpture in any art museum in the United States, in addition to having one of the most important general pre-Columbian collections in this country.
In the near future, the entire 192-piece Aztlan collection will be added to this web page, but only the most recent purchase is being highlighted now. Of the fifty-one works of art in that acquisition, thirty-four are figurines, the major focus of the Museum's collection. Fifteen Late Preclassic figurines from Michoacan and West Mexico add elegance and power to the Museum's representation of that period. Lively colors found on the twelve Classic period Teotihuacan figurines bring to mind the brilliance of a world whose colors are now lost; however, a two-part Teotihuacan brownware effigy vessel of a seated person holding a jar may just be the finest Teotihuacan figurine known. Seven Classic period Veracruz figurines include an extremely rare whistle depicting the Great Goddess grinding corn, as well as a superb mold-made standing female figure with her arms raised. Great advances in scholarship have been made at the Snite by focusing on the finest figurines, and this acquisition continues that tradition.
The remainder of the purchase is a very important group of vessels from the Preclassic and Post Classic periods. Two Tlatilco culture bird vessels were in the famous 1965 Museum of Primitive Art exhibition, The Jaguar's Children: Preclassic Central Mexico, curated by the well-known archaeologist and author, Michael D. Coe. The finest known Zapotec bat/fish duality effigy bowl, formerly in the Jay Leff collection and exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in 1966, is accompanied by other important Preclassic Zapotec forms. Toltec Maya plumbate ceramics and Aztec orangewares demonstrate the international influences and sophistication of Post Classic culture. A Post Classic Mixtec tripod vessel from the Leff collection is one of just a handful of sources for images of the human soul in Mesoamerican art.
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