Provenance Information

William P. Palmer III, Portland, Maine, active between 1958 and 1973 [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Merrin Gallery, New York [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Private collection, May 1988 [mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 2008, by gift.





William P. Palmer III was an important Pre-Columbian collector with purchases from Stendahl Galleries, Merrin Gallery, Alphonse Jax, and Borstein.

Exhibition Information

No known exhibitions.

Publication Information

No known publications.

Section of the AAMD Guidelines relied upon for the exception to 1970

Gift or bequest expected or on loan prior to 2008

Explain why the object fits the exception set forth above

Communications between the Walters Art Museum and the donor of this gift began in November 2005.

Provenance Information

William P. Palmer III, Portland, Maine, active between 1958 and 1973 [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Merrin Gallery, New York [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Private collection, June 1990 [mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 2008, by gift.

William P. Palmer III was an important Pre-Columbian collector with purchases from Stendahl Galleries, Merrin Gallery, Alphonse Jax, and Borstein.

Exhibition Information

No known exhibitions.

Publication Information

No known publications.

Section of the AAMD Guidelines relied upon for the exception to 1970

Gift or bequest expected or on loan prior to 2008

Explain why the object fits the exception set forth above

Communications between the Walters Art Museum and the donor of this gift began in November 2005.

Provenance Information

1970s, in a collection outside of Guatemala [see note 1]. By 1981, in a collection in New York [see note 2]. By 1987 until at least 1994, Carol Meyer, New York [see note 3]. May 10, 2008, anonymous sale, Skinner, Boston, lot 37, to a private collector; 2009, gift of this private collector to the MFA. (Accession Date: February 25, 2009)

NOTES: [1] Nicholas Hellmuth, who photographed Pre-Columbian objects in collections outside of Latin America, photographed the vase in the 1970s. [2] Justin Kerr photographed it in New York City in 1981 (no. K1463). [3] The vase was on loan to the Yale University Art Gallery during this time.

Exhibition Information

On loan to the Yale University Art Gallery from 1987 until 1994.

Publication Information

Justin and Barbara Kerr, Maya Vase Book (New York: Kerr Associates, 1989), vol. 1: 89.

Dorie Reents-Budet et al., Painting the Maya Universe: Royal Ceramics of the Classic Period (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), p. 168, fig. 5.4.

Dorie Reents-Budet et al., “Interacciones Politicas y el Sitio Ik’ (Motul de San José): Datos de la Cerámica,” pp. 1141-1161 in XX Simposio (2006) de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2006: Museo Nacional de Antropología e Etnología, ed. J. P. Laporte, B. Arroyo and H. Mejía (Guatemala: Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, 2007).

Section of the AAMD Guidelines relied upon for the exception to 1970

Cumulative facts and circumstances

Explain why the object fits the exception set forth above

The MFA proceeded with the acquisition in light of the vase’s extensive exhibition and publication history and because it was outside of Guatemala by the 1970s.