Physical therapy students discuss a painting at the Lowe during last year's workshop on visual thinking strategies.

This fall, the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum will present a series of three workshops for students in health care-related graduate programs. Through the Fine Art of Healthcare workshop, participants will learn visual thinking strategies and have the opportunity to collaboratively look at works of art in detail to hone their observation, listening, and communication skills.

The workshops are based on the success of last year’s program. Under the tutelage of Sherrill Hayes, professor and chair of the Department of Physical Therapy, doctoral students spent an afternoon at the Lowe Art Museum in 2009, learning about the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) program that has been adopted at several medical schools across the country and testing the program’s methodology to improve their observational and diagnostic skills by looking at art.

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It’s a new school year and time for a new season of LoweDown Happy Hours. At the first LoweDown Happy Hour of the new academic year, scheduled for Thursday, September 2 from 7 to 9 p.m., guests can enjoy a tour of the Asian Gallery by Lowe Art Museum director Brian Dursum, register for a raffle of the new catalog Aspects of Asian Art, and munch on Chinese food, with cocktails by Bacardi. Admission is $10; free for Lowe members.

Maya (Honduras) Pendants, 600-900 jade, 1/8 h. x 3" dia. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Stoetzer.

The University of Miami Lowe Art Museum’s summer exhibition features objects from ancient Central American cultures that explore the complex relationship between art and the natural world. “Jaguar’s Spots: Ancient Mesoamerican Art from the Lowe Art Museum” is on view through October 31.

The Lowe Art Museum has been collecting pre-Columbian art since 1956, and this comprehensive exhibition includes a selection of 175 objects from the permanent collection, many of which have never been displayed before. The exhibition includes pieces made during more than two millennia in ancient cultures from Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica, with pieces from the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec areas. A very fine and rare codex style Maya vase with text and mythological imagery was acquired especially for this exhibition and will be a featured piece in the show and accompanying catalog.

During the time when the art in this exhibition was produced, jaguars roamed from the southwestern United States through Mexico and Central America and deep into South America. While jaguars today are endangered and poorly understood, the peoples who lived in Mexico and Central America prior to European contact had great respect for this imposing member of the big cat family, the only one native to the Americas, and were very familiar with its habits.

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This Olmec mask, circa 1500-400 BCE, is among 175 Mesoamerican objects on view at the Lowe Art Museum this summer.

The University of Miami Lowe Art Museum’s summer exhibition will include objects from ancient Mexico through Panama that explore the complex relationship between art and the natural world. Jaguar’s Spots: Ancient Mesoamerican Art from the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami will be on view from June 26-October 31. A preview lecture and reception will be held on Friday, June 25 from 7 to 10 p.m. The lecture will be presented by exhibition curator, Traci Arden, University of Miami associate professor of anthropology.

The Lowe Art Museum has been collecting pre-Columbian art since 1956, and this comprehensive exhibition includes a selection of 175 objects from the permanent collection, many of which have never been displayed before. A very fine and rare codex style Maya vase with text and mythological imagery was acquired especially for this exhibition and will be a featured piece in the show and accompanying catalog.

The jaguar, panthera onca, is the third largest cat in the world and the most powerful predator of the New World tropics. During the time when the art in this exhibition was produced, jaguars roamed from the southwestern United States through Mexico and Central America and deep into South America. Today jaguars remain an endangered, poorly understood, and understudied large cat, but the ancient peoples who lived in Mexico and Central America prior to European contact had great respect for jaguars and were very familiar with their habits. Indigenous people from southern Mexico all the way to Panama chose to portray the jaguar in their artistic creations, and Olmec and Maya art are both known for their striking images of this fierce and beautiful creature. One of the themes explored in this exhibition is the close interconnection between the ancient peoples of Central America and the natural world in which they lived. Objects selected for the exhibition span a period of more than 2,000 years, from the earliest signs of social complexity in the Olmec area to the height of cosmopolitan urbanism in the Aztec capital. Throughout this massive span of time, the powerful creatures of the natural world remained a primary metaphor for artistic expression and the communication of social values.

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