Things are not always what they seem: this blog post was not written on either of the days we collected these images on January 11th and 12th, 2019. The reason this moved back into our minds now is that we recently visited Mexico; today as I write this it is actually March 27, 2022. While we were traveling, we looked for reference material with regards to this exhibit on my blog here and saw that there was nothing. I’m fixing that today.

The special exhibit Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire at the Phoenix Art Museum was running from October 6, 2018, through January 27, 2019, so we only had days left to see it. Admittedly, sometimes we find ourselves ignoring all media about Phoenix as usually there is not much going on anyway and by taking in the cultural information we have to also be witness to the violence and tragedies that unfold in our city.

With more than 200 objects on display, we were attending a docent-led tour on the evening of the 11th. The event was scheduled for museum members only, so we signed up for membership to the museum  and were happy to take advantage of this great opportunity and to support future exhibits like this one.

We visited a second night as we didn’t feel like we’d had our fill yesterday. But here’s where a big issue arises, why in the world did I use my phone on the second night to capture these images?

Little did we know back then in 2019 that we’d one day have the opportunity to visit Teotihuacan, the site of origin of these amazing artifacts and see a bunch of Mayan and Aztec pieces of history in Mexico.

Back in November 2004 around Thanksgiving time, we’d made a trip to San Francisco after Caroline learned of the Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya exhibit that had taken up temporary residence at the Legion of Honor museum after being hosted in Washington D.C. from April thru July, lucky us.

Now we can identify things that we are looking at, they are braziers.

This is the detail of another brazier.

The funny thing about the photos I did capture, my memory says there were other pieces here. I now have to wonder if we’d visited another exhibit of Mayan antiquities that are lost somewhere in my brain I cannot access? Maybe as I continue working through old photos, I’ll discover that other exhibit.

And regarding what we did see and photograph, I was astonished at the time, but now after visiting the anthropological museum in Mexico City and the Templo Mayor museum there too, this was just a small taste of an immensely rich cake.

Don’t get me wrong, we were honored that even this small collection came to our city but I could have never guessed that seeing so many of them in their country of origin would have the emotional impact that it did.

I don’t know if this is a she or he but whoever it was, they are beautiful.

Just a whole bunch of wow…my memory has faded but I think this vessel in fact held a whole bunch of wow.