The Kimbell Art Museum announced Wednesday what its leadership is calling one of the most important acquisitions in its 51-year history, which becomes, in its words, “the most significant work of ancient American art” in the Fort Worth museum’s entire collection.
Describing the piece as “one of the most renowned sculptures from ancient Mesoamerica, an unqualified icon of Olmec civilization,” Kimbell leadership says Standing Figure Holding a Were-Jaguar Baby is a statuette carved in jadeite — with plenty of symbolism attached.
It is, they say, “at the center of Olmec studies and the subject of scholarly interpretation for more than 70 years.” Its official unveiling, which will happen on Friday, arrives soon after the 10th anniversary of the Kimbell’s Renzo Piano Pavilion, where the figure will be displayed.
“It’s a very big deal,” said Eric M. Lee, the Kimbell’s director since 2009. “It will be our most important work of ancient American art. This object is special. It is an absolute masterpiece.”
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Jennifer Casler Price, the Kimbell’s curator of Asian, African and Ancient American Art since 1993, said with a laugh, “This is it. This is the whole package. It’s everything you would ever want in an Olmec-carved jade.”
Price cited a history that goes back to the Olmec culture of Mesoamerica; its iconography, how it depicts an Olmec ruler cradling a jaguar baby linked to the supernatural; its uniqueness, in “that there’s only one standing figure holding a figure in jade, this luminous, jewel-like green color of jade”; enhanced by its polishing of the surface, “to a sheen that brings out the color, which accentuates the form of the figure and the jaguar baby.”
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