Uploaded April 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago

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What is alive or not, socially interactive or inert, may seem clear. It is not. The ancient Maya created images bursting with social energy and a kind of writing crackling with life. Maya writing is among the few known hieroglyphic systems, a type of script where vitality looms large. In ways both solemn and fun, glyphs touch on wider debates about the nature of matter, representation, and figuration, and how, in past belief, things made by humans possessed a miraculous capacity for action.

This is the first talk of the six-part series “Vital Signs: The Visual Cultures of Maya Writing,” presented by Stephen D. Houston of Brown University for the 72nd A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts.

Part 1: youtube.com/live/Fn7i3DanIeE
Part 2: youtube.com/live/V-HX6lnJJ5Y
Part 3: youtube.com/live/ugbzybYT2ck
Part 4: youtu.be/DS29gFnxdww
Part 5: youtube.com/live/2zixZZ2ehz0
Part 6: youtube.com/live/XOO8m_g31pE

Learn more about the Mellon Lectures: nga.gov/research/casva/meetings/mellon-lectures-in-the-fine-arts/houston-2023.html

00:11 Introduction
04:27 Lecture begins

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