43rd Annual Atha Lecture: The Missing Palette: Color, Cosmos, and Creation

, November 20, 2025 6:00PM

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November 20, 2025 6:00PM

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Thursday, Nov. 20 | 6–7 pm
Members: $10 | Public: $12 | Students: $6
Atkins Auditorium

New ways of seeing color unlock an entire universe that had been dulled by early written records, the passage of time, and changing civilizations in Mesoamerica. 

Dr. Antonio Saborit investigates the original letters and accounts from the Spanish expeditions of the 1500s to the so-called New World —and how they overlooked a universe where color was key to understanding the cosmology and lifeways of indigenous Mesoamerica. Illuminating the striking absence of color in those early chronicles, Dr. Saborit reveals how the exhibition Painted Worlds: Color and Culture in Mesoamerican Art reclaims color as a central force in the making and meaning of artistic expression in Mesoamerica. Following his lecture, Dr. Saborit is joined in conversation by Nelson-Atkins Director and CEO Julián Zugazagoitia and Curator Kimberly Masteller.  

Antonio Saborit is the director of the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, Mexico’s largest and most visited museum and home to a collection of 600,000 objects of indigenous civilizations. 

The annual Atha Lecture celebrates the lives and vision of Joseph S. and Ethel B. Atha.  

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