Sacred Stories, Timeless Tales addresses multicultural mythic traditions in art, drawn exclusively from the permanent collection of the University of Miami Lowe Art Museum. The exhibition will be on view at the Lowe from June 18 through October 23. A preview, which will include a lecture and reception, will be held on Friday, June 17, from 7 to 10 p.m.

Mythic traditions are rooted in fictitious, symbolic narratives developed by cultures through time to address the relationship between the inexplicable and the explicable, the powers and forces that control the world and the human beings who occupy that world. Frequently reflecting regional differences, these sacred stories helped and in some present-day cultures continue to help elucidate a people’s religion, history, value systems, rituals, and concepts of self.

As myths exist apart from, and are not dependent upon, verifiable facts or scientific objectivity for their impact on society, they typically involve deities, heroes, wondrous creatures, and fantastic events. Some renderings faithfully adhere to time-honored visual conventions. Others reflect more personal interpretations of traditional subject matter.

Among the featured objects in the exhibition are a 6th-century B.C.E. Greek black-figure hydria, which describes a myth about the goddess Athena in the presence of Ajax and Achilles; Jacob Jordaen’s “The Judgment of Paris,” painted around 1620; a storyteller figure by Native American artist Mary Trujillo; an African Kuba mask known as Moshambwooy that represents the myth of the ancestral figure Woot; a 19th-century Japanese wood-block print that relates a ghost story; Richard Stankiewicz’s scrap metal sculpture “The River Styx,” from 1953; “St. George” by Moises Finale; Theodoros Stamos’s “Persephone” from 1945; a contemporary metal cutout of a siren by Haitian artist Serge Jolimeau; and a 10th-century sandstone sculpture of ”Ganesha Breaking His Tusk to Throw at the Moon.”

Mythological narratives were originally transmitted and preserved orally, during eras when people could neither read nor write, and paper was not available. Written traditions did not develop until a later moment on mankind’s cultural time line, as scribes and poets sought to formally preserve stories in writing, lest they disappear. Artistic expression dramatically bridges word-based systems, transforming into vivid pictorial or sculptural forms concepts that spoken and textual forms of communication can only convey through mental images. Regardless of cultural derivation or individual inspiration, all the works in the exhibition represent an artistic urge to visually address those universal questions to which mythologies respond and which unite humankind through time.

The Lowe Art Museum is located on the University of Miami Coral Gables campus at 1301 Stanford Drive, Coral Gables. Gallery and Museum Store hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday, 12 to 4 p.m.; Closed Monday. Regular admission (not including special events) is $10; $5 for seniors and non-UM students; free for Lowe Art Museum members, University of Miami students, faculty, and staff, as well as children under 12. For more information, call 305-284-3535 or visit www.lowemuseum.org.