Merle Greene Robertson

Merle Greene Robertson (August 30, 1913 – April 22, 2011) was an American artist, art historian, archaeologist, lecturer and Mayanist researcher, renowned for her extensive work towards the investigation and preservation of the art, iconography, and writing of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Central America. She is most famous for her rubbings of Maya carved stelae, sculpture, and carved stone, particularly at the Maya sites of Tikal and Palenque.

Robertson was born in 1913 in the small town of Miles City, Montana to Ada Emma Foote and Darrell Irving McCann, but she moved to Great Falls, Montana as a small child. Here she became greatly interested in Native American culture and even learned Indian sign language from Blackfoot Indian chiefs her father was close friends with. But more importantly, in Great Falls she met the artist Charles M. Russell who spent many afternoons teaching Merle how to paint. She moved to Seattle, Washington as a teenager and completed high school there and attended the University of Washington.

Merle started working as a commercial artist and gold leaf window painter; during the summers she worked at Camp Tapawingo. Following her graduation, Merle married her college boyfriend Wallace McNeill Greene. The couple was married for thirteen years and had two children, David and Barbara. However, the marriage dissolved when Merle found out her husband had participated in multiple affairs throughout the years. After the divorce, Merle and her children moved to California where she began teaching at San Rafael Military Academy. There is where she first met Bob Robertson, the dean, who she would marry later on. She later decided to go back to school and moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

She earned her Master's of Fine Arts from the University of Guanajuato, where she studied watercolors, oils, photography, and mural painting from one of Mexico's top artists, James Pinto. After completing her MFA, Merle began working on the Tikal Project with the University of Pennsylvania in 1961. She spent three summers drawing the architecture of the Central Acropolis. She also started her famous rubbings at this time, making the art form a way to document and preserve the information on Maya relief sculptures. While she was there, it was suggested that she travel through Guatemala and record stelae at other sites.

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