JUNE The Metropolitan opened the exhibit Treasures of Sacred Maya Kings. Early in the first millennium A.D., Maya kings elaborated on an inherited tradition for interacting with supernatural powers by portraying themselves in the roles and costumes of divinities. Using specific symbolic attributes and performing conjuring rituals evoking deities and deified ancestors, the kings of city-states such as Calakmul in Mexico, Tikal in Guatemala, and Copan in Honduras rendered themselves divine. The paired natural forces of the earth and sun—the earth in the guise of the ancient Maize God and the sun in the newly important Sun God—were incorporated into the power and person of the kings. Exhibited works included items of kingly regalia, objects that depict their real and mythic actions, and works that were part of these activities. The pieces ranged from large-scale relief sculpture in stone, to ceramic vessels of distinctive shape, to objects of carved jade, shell, bone, and pearl.

A mixed bag at MoMA, "Dada" proved that the movement, one of the most influential of the 20th century, was much, much more than Duchamp's "Urinal." Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are expert at designing spaces for exhibiting and viewing art. Tate Modern, Walker Art Center, and the De Young Museum are just a few examples of their brilliant designs for diverse collections. For their examination of MoMA’s collection, they offered a counterpoint to the collection galleries that challenges how art is categorized and displayed. Bringing together painting, sculpture, design, photography, and film, the installation draws surprising spatial relationships among the artworks and the viewer in a single gallery that functions as a kind of "perception machine." By manipulating and restricting perception, the architects hoped to intensify the viewer experience, rendering it more memorable and personal than that of a conventional gallery setting.