M.A.R.I. Lunch Talk - Rex Koontz

Join us for a presentation by Rex Koontz, Moores Professor of Art History at the University of Houston. His talk, “The Necessity of MARI’s Pre-Columbian Collection: Frans Blom and the Exhibition of MARI Objects in the Depression-era United States,” explores MARI’s role in major Pre-Columbian exhibitions before World War II and Frans Blom’s efforts to build interest in Pre-Columbian art and culture. Koontz will focus in particular on MARI’s contributions to the 1937 Greater Texas and Pan-American Exposition and the significance of Tulane’s collection in presenting Mesoamerican art to a broad public audience.

Bio:

Rex Koontz has studied and published on the public sculpture of Ancient Mexico for more than three decades, including articles, book chapters, and the book Lightning Gods and Feathered Serpents (University of Texas Press, 2009). He contributed to the catalog for the bicentenary exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico (Seis Ciudades Antiguas de Mesoamérica, 2011). Other books include Organized Violence in the Art and Architecture of Mesoamerica (edited with Heather Orr, 2009), Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica (edited with Kathryn Reese-Taylor and Annabeth Headrick, 2001), Mexico (with Michael Coe, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th editions, 2002, 2008, 2013, and 2019), and The History of Art: A Global View by Robertson, Hutton, Koontz et al. (2021; 2nd edition, 2026). More recently, he was the presenting curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston exhibition Golden Worlds: The Portable Universe of Indigenous Colombia (originating venue: LACMA) and a contributor to “Collecting the Other Americas” (Denver Art Museum, edited by Victoria Lyall and Ellen Hoobler, 2025). Rex Koontz is Moores Professor of Art History at the University of Houston.

Abstract:

By the early 1930s, the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University had amassed an important collection of Pre-Columbian objects. To increase the Institute's profile and support its mission, Tulane became a driving force behind several important Pre-Columbian exhibitions in the years before World War II. This presentation focuses on MARI's contributions to the 1937 Greater Texas and Pan-American Exposition at the Texas State Fair and on Frans Blom’s role in fostering a surge in interest in Pre-Columbian art and culture in the region. I will argue that for the more than 150,000 visitors who saw the show, the Tulane Pre-Columbian collection formed the centerpiece of the argument that the Mesoamerican tradition was one of the world's great ancient art traditions.