It's an interesting and cool way to spend a hot summer afternoon.  A new exhibit and book at the Maxwell Museum explores the textile traditions in Zinacantán, a Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico.  The exhibit includes the techniques of backstrap loom weaving and shows the ways the textiles are used in daily life.

This exhibit will be in place through December 2011.  Hours at the Maxwell are Tuesday – Friday 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.  The exhibit is free and the public is welcome.

The exhibit titled "Weaving Generations Together: Evolving Creativity in the Maya of Chiapas" includes photographs of Maya weavers in Chiapas by Lauren Greenfield, an analysis of textile weaving techniques and hand-on activities for families.

The exhibit documents work by Harvard researcher Patricia Marks Greenfield and Carla Childs, an anthropology student.  They did field work in 1969 and '70 in Nabenchauk, a hamlet of the highland Maya community of Zinacantec in Chiapas, Mexico.  Then 21 years later they returned to examine how entrepreneurship had changed the ways in which weaving was taught and marketed.  The exhibit is accompanied by the book written by Greenfield.

This exhibit is co-curated with Greenfield and the Maxwell Museum's Curator of Ethnology Kathryn Klein, Curator of Education Amy Grochowski and Ruth Burgett-Jolie.

Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu