LANDMARK EVENT : MAYA ART: THE FINDS OF A LOST CIVILIZATION

The study of Mayan art and culture is the best and the worst of all possible pursuits, to hear Charles Gallenkamp tell it. On the one hand, the field is erupting with new discoveries and attracting a feverish level of popular interest.

“Maya archeology is so active; we’re learning so much, so rapidly,” he exclaimed, during the installation of “Maya: Treasures of an Ancient Civilization,” a landmark exhibition opening Saturday at the Museum of Natural History. Gallenkamp coordinated the efforts of five other scholars in organizing the traveling exhibition for the Albuquerque Museum.

“We’re beginning to see Maya civilization in terms of its integration. We’re finding out about the hierarchical order of cities and the political and economic control they exercised over each other,” he continued. There are aesthetic revelations as well, offering new understanding of regional variations in artistic styles, cultural mergers and the role of assistants who worked with master artists.

Mayan archeology is on the move. Hallowed pieces long thought authentic are exposed as fakes, while others once deemed suspicious are elevated to the ranks of genuine treasures. Some recent finds of pottery have astonished experts by looking “too good,” deviating from stylistic canons and otherwise causing them to re-think conventional wisdom, according to Gallenkamp.

Such developments are heady stuff for toilers in a field that is supposed to be stodgy and plodding. Archeologists of a “lost civilization” still loaded with questions are piecing together some answers and making the point that the culture is the lively heritage of 2 1/2 million Mayans in Meso-America. (Even terminology is in flux, with experts promoting the use of Maya as both noun and adjective, singular and plural, while dictionaries and the public cling to the familiar variations, Mayan and Mayas.)

On the other hand, all this action hasn’t stamped out the continuing tragedy of looting and smuggling that plagues Mayan art and architecture. Historians and other specialists are perpetually hamstrung by wanton destruction of cultural treasures and the theft of anything that can be ripped off temples and tombs and sold for profit.

“The situation is out of control. It’s gotten worse and worse,” Gallenkamp said. “There’s a network of looters that’s very well organized, well financed and sometimes quite violent. The booty is pouring into the United States and Europe and there’s no way to control the flow. You can’t police a rain forest.

“I’ve seen sites that look as if they have sustained an artillery attack and a temple that has had every architectural embellishment broken off it,” he groaned, then recounted instances of sawed-off stelae and hacked-up sculpture.

What does an archeologist and author of three books on the Mayas do about a problem of such massive proportions? “You despair,” Gallenkamp said with a sigh.

You also organize exhibitions to educate the public about the glories of an amazingly advanced civilization, dubbed “the Greeks of the New World,” in the hope of proving the need to preserve its heritage. This motivation wasn’t the controlling one behind “Maya: Treasures of an Ancient Civilization” but it was an important factor, according to Gallenkamp.

In the displays of ceramic, stone, jade and metal wonders, he hopes the public will see “how the destruction of architectural context undermines the true significance” of artifacts. “Once you take art out of context, it becomes suspect,” he said, immediately acknowledging that “no one, including museums, is immune from that problem.”

Not setting itself up as dictator of museum policy, the curatorial committee of “Maya” did take the controversial stance of limiting the show to the national holdings of Guatemala, Mexico and Belize; registered collections in Mexico, and pieces added to American and Canadian public collections before 1970, the date of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

The limitation didn’t prevent the inclusion of a striking array of massive granite reliefs, stone sculpture, polychrome pottery and jewelry of jade and gold. Visitors will find elements of the terrifying and the whimsical in everything from depictions of bloodletting and receptacles for the hearts of human sacrifices to charming animal-shaped whistles.

Gallenkamp and his colleagues (Flora S. Clancy, Peter D. Harrison and Jeremy A. Sabloff of the University of New Mexico, Clemency C. Coggins of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University and T. Patrick Culbert of the University of Arizona) have assembled 207 objects from the three countries to cover 3,500 years of history.

The curators approached authorities with “a want list, some hoped-for items and the expectation of an element of surprise,” Gallenkamp said. “Sometimes they couldn’t give us what we wanted but they always cooperated with the spirit and occasionally they knocked our eyes out.

“We enjoyed remarkable cooperation from the governments of Mexico, Belize and Guatemala, for several reasons: We had an outstanding itinerary of American and Canadian museums, superb scholarship, the backing of a museum in a state that’s 40% Spanish speaking and the unusual situation of $400,000 in public funds from the City of Albuquerque and the State of New Mexico.”

Furthermore, Gallenkamp continued, “The time was right. There’s a great tendency to get back to the roots of Indian culture and a reverential attitude about these artifacts. Also, with all the economic and political problems that dominate the news from these countries, the exhibition was seen as a positive move, a way of ‘putting the best foot forward.’ ”

“Maya” drew an average of 22,000 visitors a week during its premiere at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In Los Angeles to Nov. 11, the show is open Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For information about tickets and a host of ancillary events, call (213) 744-MAYA.