Chiapas
Collection
The Science Museum of Minnesota invites you to explore 20th and 21st century Maya material culture from the state of Chiapas, Mexico. You will find items housed at the Science Museum and at La Asociación Cultural Na Bolom, located in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.
The Chiapas collection at the Science Museum was assembled between the late 1970s and the early 2010s to document and celebrate the vibrant culture and art of the Maya of the region. The collection illustrates a remarkable cultural resilience that recalls the pre-Columbian past, while also capturing the influences of globalization and international tourism of the last 40 years.
One highlight of the collection is the weaving traditions represented, including a spectacular multi-generational collection of textiles purchased from artists from over a dozen individual Maya communities. The collection also includes weaving tools and other items of modern Maya material culture, and an extensive ethnographic photo archive that illustrates both artisan work and daily life in the Chiapas highlands.
Na Bolom holds a similar textile collection, assembled over the same period, but in many cases from different artists, communities, or particular years. We are hosting their digitized data here to expand awareness of their collection and to digitally unite these two related collections.
We are working closely with Na Bolom and consulting with Maya weavers and others from surrounding communities to enrich our understanding of the items and images in the collection. Ultimately, our intent is to expand access to these collections for Maya artists and communities while also making them available to a wide international audience.
Collection Highlights
Zinacantán style through time / El estilo Zinacantán a través del tiempo
Each village in Chiapas, Mexico has its own unique style of clothing that is rooted in deep textile making traditions, but changes and evolves through time. The Maya village of Zinacantán is a major producer of flowers for the region and across Mexico. It is also known for its bright and elaborate textile art, which in recent decades has featured bold and elaborate floral designs. This selection of woven shawls from Zinacantán illustrates how artists’ styles have changed over the years to feature larger, more elaborate flowers, more colorful and even metallic thread, and different edging. Some of these changes are due to the introduction of embroidery machines, acrylic fibers, and synthetic dyes. However, some aspects also stay the same, such as the presence of flowers, stripes, and tassels.
Objects from the Tulan Family / Objetos de la familia Tulan
Former Science Museum of Minnesota curator, Lou B. Casagrande, traveled to Chiapas in the 1970s and 1980s and purchased many items from the Tulan family in the village of Zinacantán in Chiapas, Mexico. Tulan family members hand-made the pieces in this selection of objects. Jeffrey Foxx and Christiana Dittmann, photographers who have worked extensively in Chiapas, photographed the Tulan family at their home as they wove a wedding huipil (A77:1:136) the museum purchased.
Huipils from Villages in Chiapas in the 1970s / Huipiles de pueblos de Chiapas en los años 1970
Huipils, women’s tunic-style shirts, are important items of clothing and cultural identifiers for Maya people in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, since pre-Columbian times, long before colonization. While maintaining a profound and overarching Maya culture, individual Maya villages in Chiapas have their own unique identities, which can be seen in the language, customs, and style of clothing of the people living there. Maya artists from different villages in Chiapas, Mexico, wove the huipils in this selection during the mid-20th century. Our selection demonstrates some of the visual differences and similarities in styles of the villages at the time they were woven.
