KANSAS CITY, MO.- The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City announces the exhibition, Painted Worlds: Color and Culture in Mesoamerican Art, opening Nov. 1, 2025, and running through Feb. 8, 2026. This exhibition will immerse visitors in the vibrant and profound artistic traditions of Mesoamerica, exploring the deep connections among color, creation, and the cosmos through 3,000 years of history.

Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and co-curated by Diana Magaloni, Deputy Director, Program Director and Dr. Virginia Fields Curator of the Art of the Ancient Americas, and Alyce de Carteret, Assistant Curator, Art of the Americas, and curated at the Nelson-Atkins by Kimberly Masteller, Curator, South & Southeastern Art, Painted Worlds brings together approximately 250 objects from collections across Mexico, Europe, and the United States, including significant pieces from the Nelson-Atkins' own holdings. This will be the first exhibition showcasing ancient Mesoamerica at the Nelson-Atkins in 40 years, offering an unprecedented opportunity to view objects rarely, if ever, seen before in the U.S., such as an extraordinary pre-Hispanic book of divination, the Codex Laud.

“This exhibition is a testament to the profound power of art to illuminate human understanding and connection across millennia,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, Director & CEO of the Nelson-Atkins. “It reveals the astonishing sophistication of Mesoamerican artistic practices, demonstrating how color was not merely decorative, but deeply embedded in the very fabric of their worldview and cosmology. This is a rare and vital opportunity to experience these masterpieces firsthand and gain a deeper appreciation for the ingenuity and spiritual depth of these ancient cultures."

Through meticulously crafted objects, visitors will discover how Indigenous Mesoamerican artists, as creators and keepers of religious, cultural, and cosmological knowledge, shaped their world. By manipulating natural materials, these artists created richly colored objects that manifested their views of the cosmos, time, and place. The exhibition delves into the insights behind the colors and materials in ancient Mesoamerican art and how these enduring traditions inform contemporary Indigenous artists today.

“Nature, color, and worldview were deeply connected in the cultures of Mesoamerica,” said Masteller. “Color was believed to be created by the sun and reflected in the natural world. Indigenous artists drew from the resources around them. Through their skilled hands and generations of knowledge, they transformed materials like plants into pigments, earth into figures, and jadeite stones into breath, literally animating the world as they colored it.”

Painted Worlds will highlight the technical and cosmological sophistication of Mesoamerican art, informed by modern scientific analysis and historical sources that illuminate the religious functions and cosmic symbolism of color in artistic practices. It synthesizes nearly two decades of interdisciplinary research on the materiality of color and its significance in art in Mesoamerica, which reveals that color is imbued with cosmological meaning that confers deep significance onto the artworks it adorns. This research, conducted by curators, conservators, and scientists in Mexico, Europe, and at LACMA, is shared in a fully illustrated scholarly catalog that accompanies the exhibition and is available for purchase in the Museum Store.

Painted Worlds is part of a five-year World Religions Initiative at the Nelson-Atkins—a series of exhibitions, public programs, cultural festivals, and community outreach to promote understanding and empathy around world religions.