This flower vase, designed by Wiener Werkstätte founder Josef Hoffmann, features an inverted bell-shaped bowl supported by a delicate wirework stand and topped with an openwork band of foliate forms.

Brilliantly patterned illustrations that capture the spirit of romance, stark and lonely images that bespeak the inner heart of America, and forceful paintings that depict the essence of people and the land—three generations of the Wyeth family, N.C. (Newell Convers) Wyeth, his son Andrew and his grandson Jamie, have produced a body of work which for many people characterizes America.

This essay originally appeared in the Dallas Museum of Art Bulletin as an announcement for An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art, an exhibition in the fall of 1988.

The Maize God is one of the most important deities in Mesoamerica, especially among the Classic period Maya. Possible representations of maize are known from the Formative period, most commonly dwarves that bear maize signs on their bodies, which may refer to maize but also might represent lightning or rain. The earliest representations of the maize god appear among the Early Classic Maya, usually depicted as a young male with stylized maize on the top of the head. During the Late Classic p

Maya* civilization encompassed 200,000 square miles of foothills, rain forests, and plains in the national territories of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. It endured for nearly 2,000 years, from about 400 BCE, when the first kings raised temple-mountains in royal cities such as El Mirador and Cerros, until 1697, when the Spaniards defeated King Kan-Ek of the Itzá at Tayasal in the Petén region of Guatemala.

Tlaloc generally refers to the Mesoamerican god of rain, storms, and lightning. The name Tlaloc derives from the Aztec language Nahuatl and can be translated as “that which lies upon the surface of the earth,” a reference to the clouds that form around the tops of mountains during the rainy season.[1] While Tlaloc is known primarily by the Aztec name, the rain god is one of the oldest deities in ancient Mesoamerica and is known by many different names.

Little is known about the the Late Classic period (600 to 900 CE) Maya artist known as the Metropolitan Vase Painter. His name derives from his "magnum opus" vessel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he is also commonly referred to as the Metropolitan Master.[1] Vessels of this type are painted in what scholars call the “Codex style” because they resemble the painting of Maya books and manuscripts, and often feature red, white, and black slip.

Mesoamerica, or Middle America, is a vast culture area that encompasses most of what is today central and southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western areas of Honduras and El Salvador. Mesoamerica's first highly developed civilization, which archaeologists have named the Olmec, emerged about 1500 BCE in two distant areas of Mexico--the central highland valleys (particularly in Morelos and Guerrero) and the lowland forests of south and east (particularly Veracruz and Tabasco).