page_title: Baltimore Museum of Art
section_title: Art of the ancient Americas
hierarchical_section_title: Baltimore Museum of Art / Collections / Art of the ancient Americas
caption_attribution_description: English: Ancient woman with child. Maya or Jaina. 7th-10th century. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of John and Marisol Stokes, Upper Nyack, New York. BMA 2006.117
context_page_description: The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's internationally renowned collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of modern art, as well as one of the nation's finest holdings of prints, drawings, and photographs. The galleries currently showcase collections of art from Africa; works by established and emerging contemporary artists; European and American paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts; ancient Antioch mosaics; art from Asia, and textiles from around the world.
  The 210,000-square-foot museum is distinguished by a neoclassical building designed in the 1920s by renowned American architect John Russell Pope and two landscaped gardens with 20th-century sculpture. The museum is located between Charles Village, to the east, Remington, to the south, Hampden, to the west; and south of the Roland Park neighborhoods, immediately adjacent to the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University, though the museum is an independent institution and not affiliated with the university.
context_section_description: This collection contains works from 59 distinct artistic traditions from Aztec and Maya of Mesoamerica, Chimú and Muisca of Andean South America, and Nicoya and Atlantic Watershed of Costa Rica. The collection includes works from 2500 BC to AD 1521. The core collection of 120 objects was given to the museum by Alan Wurtzburger in 1958, which significantly expanded the scope of the existing collection and provided momentum for a traveling exhibition of Peruvian ceramics titled Myths of Ancient Peru (1969).
  The collection is particularly admired for its West Mexico ceramics, including an important Nayarit house model and an enthroned chief. Also on display is a unique assemblage of 23 figures in dance regalia which celebrates ancient performance and highlights the diversity of Colima art.
  Other notable pieces include a finely worked serpentine figure of Olmec mastery, elegant portrayals of Maya and Aztec noblewomen showcasing the integral roles women played in the social, political, economic, and spiritual realms of society, and miniature gold votives in the Muisca tradition.
caption: Ancient woman with child. Maya or Jaina. 7th-10th century. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of John and Marisol Stokes, Upper Nyack, New York. BMA 2006.117
exif: {}