Powerful Partnership Brings Unique Exhibition to Life—and to Your Community
By Becky Brown
Museums are magical places. Through their doors, visitors discover new ideas and stories that have been forgotten, hidden, or overlooked. Each exhibition is a new opportunity to learn, grow, and better understand ourselves and our communities.
This alchemy doesn’t happen by chance. It’s the product of hard work and collaboration behind the scenes. The new ExhibitsUSA art exhibition Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Quiché through Illustration is a perfect example.
To understand this exhibition, you’ve got to start in an archive in Irving, Texas. In this collection, Popol Vuh was nowhere to be found.
Irving Archives and Museum in Irving, Texas, partnered with ExhibitsUSA to tour “Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Quiché through Illustration” featuring the illustrations of Jaime Arrendondo. Photo courtesy of IAM.
What wasn’t present was important, and a sign of what needed to be brought to light.
Irving Archives and Museum (IAM) started as an archive. After 40 years of dreams and plans to create a history museum, IAM finally opened its doors in 2020.
“We built ourselves around the idea that community comes first,” says Jennifer Landry, director of museums for the City of Irving. “That means the community is curating and driving content, and we must be responsive and recognize the diverse community that Irving has.
“Everybody sees themselves in our history,” she continues. “But at its foundation, we were an archive that had been predominantly white for decades. It’s important for us to preserve and protect, but also document and reflect Irving as it is today so it’s relevant and a space the community can connect with.”
With both this history and this forward focus in mind, IAM is always on the lookout for exhibitions that reflect and expand upon the cultures that call Texas home. The traveling exhibitions from Mid-America Arts Alliance’s ExhibitsUSA have been a valuable resource.
“As a small-to-medium-sized museum, we have a limited budget, and we have to really stretch our dollar,” Jennifer says. “A lot of exhibits are available, but many are so expensive. You have to plop down $50,000 just for the exhibit—that doesn’t include the installation, marketing, promotional materials, or special events.”
These constraints could limit the content that IAM is able to bring to its community. But they don’t.
“ExhibitsUSA provides us with affordable options,” Jennifer says. In comparison to other traveling exhibitions, ExhibitsUSA exhibitions cost approximately $3,000 to $9,000 for venues in M-AAA’s six-state region; and between $4,000 to under $15,000 for out-of-region venues. “They offer programs that are consistently reliable, well documented, and well done that our community really responds to.”
Jaime Arredondo, The tribes hide their idols in the forests and jungles, 2019; ink on aluminum, 20 1/2 x 14 inches; Courtesy of the artist. This illustration is a part of the ExhibitsUSA touring exhibition, Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Quiché through Illustration.
So it only made sense that when IAM happened upon a powerful story that demanded to be told, Jennifer reached out to ExhibitsUSA. But about that story . . .
It’s been compared to The Odyssey and The Epic of Gilgamesh. But Popol Vuh had been largely forgotten.
The creation myth was developed around 1000 CE in present-day Guatemala. A highland Mayan people called the Quiché created a pictographic creation myth of the universe. Known as Popol Vuh or Book of the Community, the tale features twins who must descend into the underworld to save the next and final generation of humanity.
It’s an epic tale. And one so powerful that the Spanish ordered it—along with other Indigenous literary codices—to be burned in 1524. The stories of Popol Vuh were retold in 1721 and translated to Spanish. It’s now the earliest known surviving body of literature in the Americas.
Artist Jaime Arredondo is a Texas native of Mexican American Tejano descent. He created 65 vivid illustrations to tell the story contained in Popol Vuh. He’d displayed some of those illustrations in New York City, where he now lives. But it was a chance encounter at IAM that helped put the art on the move. An IAM visitor mentioned Jaime’s work to Jennifer, and offered to connect Jaime and Jennifer. One complicated game of telephone later, Jennifer and Jaime collaborated to curate an exhibit at IAM.
“I was really struck by how important this story is,” Jennifer says. “It’s one of the earliest known recorded stories of the Americas, but it was almost lost. It took such perseverance of the Quiché people to make sure their history was saved. I could see this story being a traveling exhibition, so I reached out to Mid-America Arts Alliance.”
ExhibitsUSA was pleased to partner with IAM and Jaime to turn Popol Vuh into a fully realized traveling exhibition. Collaboratively, the team developed text to tell the story and translated it into Spanish. High-quality digital productions reflect the detail of the art. It’s the saga of Popol Vuh, accessible and available to audiences around the country.
“It’s a big deal for us, to share the story, and to share Jaime’s story, too,” Jennifer says. “He’s an amazing artist and beautiful soul and has done so much research. Being able to take something we started as a project for Irving and now share it? We can’t do it alone, but we can collaborate with ExhibitsUSA. That’s been an amazing partnership.”
See Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Quiché through Illustration at El Museum Latino in Omaha, Nebraska. The opening reception is September 20, 2024, and the exhibition is on view through January 7, 2025. Additional venues hosting the exhibition around the country are listed here under Tour Schedule.
Top photo: Jennifer Landry, director of museums for the City of Irving, and artist Jaime Arredondo at the Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Quiché through Illustration exhibition at the Irving Archives and Museum. Photo by Drew Timmons