While in Philadelphia to see the Barnes collection a few weeks ago, I popped over to the Penn Museum to take in a new exhibition devoted to the Maya. The exhibition is billed as an examination of the supposed Maya doomsday prediction, which is all the rage in the darker corners of the Internet. That’s a bit pop-culty for my taste, a strawman that the curators indulge only to repeatedly knock down. But the museum does a good job with something more fundamental, immersing visitors in the complicated visual world of Maya carving, and the even more dizzying calendar systems that underpinned their political and philosophical world. It’s worth visiting, and may have particular appeal to younger audiences.
