Robert-Goldwater-Library

Art From Tribal Cultures: Summer in Chelsea

Marada Figure, New Ireland, Tabar Island, side view (detail).
Photo: Betty Cunningham Gallery.

via NYTimes:
Art in Review
Published: July 6, 2007

IT’S ALL SPIRITUAL
Art From Tribal Cultures
Betty Cuningham Gallery
541 West 25th Street, Chelsea
Through July 27

HOLLAND COTTER

For its summer group show, Cuningham Gallery has set aside contemporary art in favor of what looks like a telescoped version of last spring’s Tribal and Textile Arts Fair. In this case all of the work, whether for sale or on loan for the occasion, has been selected by a single New York dealer, Alan Steele. Installed in natural light in a white-box space, it adds up to a forceful ensemble. Chelsea doesn’t often offer such sights — old art that looks considerably fresher than a lot of new art — and it could use more.

And the show could use some focus. The “tribal cultures” represented are from all over the map: Africa, Oceania, Asia and North and South America. The work encompasses a broad range of materials and meanings. But instead of using function or place of origin as an organizing principle, Mr. Steele goes for the vaguer categories of formal affinity and all-purpose spirituality.

General physical resemblance is sufficient reason for displaying a Nepalese shrine figure, an Easter Island ancestor figure and a carved Tlingit dagger together: all are small, slender, vertical and figurative. And spirituality, whatever its meaning, is accepted as a natural bond between visually and culturally disparate things: between, say, a classic Fang reliquary figure from Gabon, looking like a muscle-bound baby, and a Mimbres bowl from New Mexico, its suave abstract designs like millennium-old Art Deco; or between a Taoist ritual mask shrouded in strips of calligraphy-covered rice paper and a swatch of Tahitian mulberry bark cloth ornamented with delicate nature images.

Was the Polynesian cloth made to be worn on the body or hung on the wall? What ritual purpose did the Chinese mask serve, and what does the writing on the paper mean? Does “spiritual” mean the same thing when applied to these two objects or to a Fiji war club or an Ethiopian carving platter?

The show’s response to all of this is in its title and is symptomatic of an outdated approach to exhibiting non-Western art. This approach has made a comeback in the hazy, lazy Postmodernist — which is to say Modernist — 2000s: no context, no explanations; just beauty, our way.

But do we still need to be persuaded of the beauty and spirituality of “tribal” art? No. Do we still need to learn why “tribal” and “spiritual” are spurious categories, and how the objects defined by them turn the modern Western concept of art itself on its head? Yes.

I urge you to visit “It’s All Spiritual” for its extreme beauties, and I encourage you to bring the questions the show doesn’t ask.

Dispute continues over Bingham's Machu Picchu finds

In case you missed it the Sunday New York Times magazine's cover story, "The Possessed", chronicles the ongoing dispute between Yale University and the government of Peru over the disposition of archaeological materials excavated by Hiram Bingham in the early twentieth century.

Author Arthur Lubow profiles the many colorful parties to the dispute: Hiram Bingham III, the "imposingly tall and strong-minded" adventurer whose original promises to the Peruvian government are still not entirely clear; Richard Burger, professor of anthropology at Yale University, and his wife Lucy Salazar, ambassadors and negotiators for the university; Eliane Karp-Toledo, European-born wife of former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo, "a slim woman with long, wavy reddish blond hair and a fondness for fashionable versions of Andean woolens and ethnic jewelry"; Luis Lumbreras, "charismatic Marxist ... specialist on pre-Inca Peruvian cultures" with an unfortunate blot on his copy book; and Terry Garcia, executive vice-president of the National Geographic Society, caught between two unyielding institutions while trying to protect his own against potentially damaging blow-back.

All in all the stuff of a thoroughly engrossing telenovela.

PHOTO: The Explorer at Rest Hiram Bingham III, in his tent in 1912 after completing a season’s excavation. The final disposition of what he dug up remains in dispute. (Hiram Bingham, copyright © 2007 National Geographic)

New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show

Photo: Cary Conover for The New York Times
The New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show opened at the Seventh Regiment Armory.

via NYTimes Art Review:
New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show
Global Art: Talismans, a Phantom and a King
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: May 21, 2007

You think art fairs aren’t sexy? The New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show is out to prove you wrong. Just inside the entrance to the Seventh Regiment Armory’s drill hall you’ll find a peppery display of Burmese pornographic drawings. And smack in the middle of the show, bristling like a cactus garden, is a cluster of carved-wood Thai phalluses.

No need to call the vice squad. All this stuff is religious or folk-religious. The sculptures and drawings were created a century or so ago as talismans to ensure prosperity, fertility and supernatural protection. It is said that they can even perform miracles, like warding off bullets and turning ho-hum you and me into Ms. and Mr. Irresistible.

These forceful items are part of a special display organized by Chinalai Tribal Antiquities, a gallery in Shoreham, N.Y., for a fair that has more than a few irresistible features of its own. The wide-open space at the armory, suitable for tanks and tennis, imposes the same regimental format on every fair that appears there: booth beside booth, aisle after aisle. But this show has a look of its own, in part because it is the only tribal fair in town, which seems odd, given that New York is, among other things, an African-American city with a significant African population, a Latino city that grows more Latino by the day and an Asia outside Asia.

As for textiles, where else, even taking the Metropolitan Museum into account, can you lay eyes on the range you see here? [read on...]

The Inca: Bridging Gaps

An Inca suspension bridge in 1877 and the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson. Engraving, from “Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas” by E. George Squier (Harper and Brothers); Angel Franco/The New York Times

via NYTimes:

How the Inca Leapt Canyons
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: May 8, 2007

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Conquistadors from Spain came, they saw and they were astonished. They had never seen anything in Europe like the bridges of Peru. Chroniclers wrote that the Spanish soldiers stood in awe and fear before the spans of braided fiber cables suspended across deep gorges in the Andes, narrow walkways sagging and swaying and looking so frail.

Yet the suspension bridges were familiar and vital links in the vast empire of the Inca, as they had been to Andean cultures for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. The people had not developed the stone arch or wheeled vehicles, but they were accomplished in the use of natural fibers for textiles, boats, sling weapons — even keeping inventories by a prewriting system of knots.

So bridges made of fiber ropes, some as thick as a man’s torso, were the technological solution to the problem of road building in rugged terrain. By some estimates, at least 200 such suspension bridges spanned river gorges in the 16th century. One of the last of these, over the Apurimac River, inspired Thornton Wilder’s novel “The Bridge of San Luis Rey.”

Although scholars have studied the Inca road system’s importance in forging and controlling the pre-Columbian empire, John A.Ochsendorf of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here said, “Historians and archaeologists have neglected the role of bridges.”

Dr. Ochsendorf’s research on Inca suspension bridges, begun while he was an undergraduate at Cornell University, illustrates an engineering university’s approach to archaeology, combining materials science and experimentation with the traditional fieldwork of observing and dating artifacts. Other universities conduct research in archaeological materials, but it has long been a specialty at M.I.T.

Photos: Carl T. Gossett Jr./The New York Times, left; Adriana von Hagen, center; and Robert Spencer for The New York Times

The first steel section, top, being installed on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1963. The last remaining Inca bridge in Peru, center, was the model for the M.I.T. bridge project. John A. Ochsendorf of M.I.T., above, showing cable made in Peru.

Students here are introduced to the multidisciplinary investigation of ancient technologies as applied in transforming resources into cultural hallmarks from household pottery to grand pyramids. In a course called “materials in human experience,” students are making a 60-foot-long fiber bridge in the Peruvian style. On Saturday, they plan to stretch the bridge across a dry basin between two campus buildings.

In recent years, M.I.T. archaeologists and scientists have joined forces in studies of early Peruvian ceramics, balsa rafts and metal alloys; Egyptian glass and Roman concrete; and also the casting of bronze bells in Mexico. They discovered that Ecuadoreans, traveling by sea, introduced metallurgy to western Mexico. They even found how Mexicans added bits of morning-glory plants, which contain sulfur, in processing natural rubber into bouncing balls.

“Mexicans discovered vulcanization 3,500 years before Goodyear,” said Dorothy Hosler, an M.I.T. professor of archaeology and ancient technology. “The Spanish had never seen anything that bounced like the rubber balls of Mexico.”

Heather Lechtman, an archaeologist of ancient technology who helped develop the M.I.T. program, said that in learning “how objects were made, what they were made of and how they were used, we see people making decisions at various stages, and the choices involve engineering as well as culture.”

From this perspective, she said, the choices are not always based only on what works well, but also are guided by ideological and aesthetic criteria. In the casting of early Mexican bells, attention was given to their ringing tone and their color; an unusually large amount of arsenic was added to copper to make the bronze shine like silver.

“If people use materials in different ways in different societies, that tells you something about those people,” Professor Lechtman said.

In the case of the Peruvian bridges, the builders relied on a technology well suited to the problem and their resources. The Spanish themselves demonstrated how appropriate the Peruvian technique was.

Dr. Ochsendorf, a specialist in early architecture and engineering, said the colonial government tried many times to erect European arch bridges across the canyons, and each attempt ended in fiasco until iron and steel were applied to bridge building. The Peruvians, knowing nothing of the arch or iron metallurgy, instead relied on what they knew best, fibers from cotton, grasses and saplings, and llama and alpaca wool.

The Inca suspension bridges achieved clear spans of at least 150 feet, probably much greater. This was a longer span than any European masonry bridges at the time. The longest Roman bridge in Spain had a maximum span between supports of 95 feet. And none of these European bridges had to stretch across deep canyons. [read on...]

Maya Meetings @ UT Austin

via petiteMort.org:

  Friday March 9th - Wed May 14th:

Maya Meet 2007
The River Cities: Yaxchilan, Piedras Negras, Pomona

University of Texas at Austin
Department of Art and Art History
Austin, TX 78712

Maya Meet at UT in Austin

Times: Check website for details. Friday, Sat, Sun, presentations and forums; Mon, Tues, Wed reserved for specialized Workshops.

Admission: Per event, check website for details. The Mayan Glyphs Workshops run from Monday through Wednesday, are offered per course registration fee.

Every year scholars and students of Meso-American culture meet in Austin to discuss new findings in the field. In addition to the presentations and forums specialized workshops are offered as a crash course to the deciphering Mayan writing. Beginners to advanced classes are available.

The focus of the 2007 Maya Meetings at Texas is the Usumacinta River region (Southern Mexico, Western Guatemala), looking at both ancient sites and contemporary issues.

ARTstor: New Collaborations and more...

NEWS via ARTstor Feb 07 Newsletter (v.8):
Collections: New Collaborations

Pre-Columbian and World Archeology from the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University

ARTstor has reached an agreement with the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, through which ARTstor will distribute digital images related to Pre-Columbian archaeology, as well as images  of Pre-Columbian, African, Native North American, and Oceanic objects from the museum's collections. Approximately 55,000 images are from the photographic archives of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) which document early archaeological excavations throughout Central America. ARTstor will also distribute up to 90,000 digital images of the Peabody Museum's remarkable collections of archaeological artifacts and art objects.

+++

Native American Ledger Drawings

Now available to ARTstor users are approximately 2,000 Plains Indian ledger drawings from the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Mostly produced in the middle to late decades of the 19th century, these drawings represent an important indigenous artistic tradition of great and increasing interest to art historians and other scholars.

via ARTstor: Upcoming Collaborations

Collaborative Agreement Reached Between the Art and Art History Department of the University of Texas at Austin, and ARTstor: Ferguson/Royce Archive of Pre-Columbian Photography

ARTstor and the Art and Art History Department at The University of Texas at Austin are pleased to announce that they will collaborate to digitize and distribute the Ferguson/Royce Archive. The Ferguson/Royce Archive consists of approximately 5,200 negatives, created by William Ferguson and John Q. Royce and depicting views of Mesoamerican and Southwest United States sites. William Ferguson and John Q. Royce were amateur archaeologists and aviators who devoted themselves to documenting from the air the major Pre-Columbian ruins. Their photography is best known from publications they authored, together or individually. These books include: Maya Ruins in Central America in color: Tikal, Copan, and Quirigua, 1984; Maya ruins of Mexico in color: Palenque, Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, Xlapak, Labná, Chichén Itzá, Cobá, Tulum, 1977; Anasazi ruins of the Southwest in Color, 1991; The Anasazi of Mesa Verde and the Four Corners, 1996; and Mesoamerica's Ancient Cities: Aerial Views of Pre-Columbian Ruins in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras, 1990.

The Ferguson/Royce Archive represents a photographic portrayal of many of the major Pre-Columbian sites in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. Magnificent aerial views, as well as ground photographs, provide glimpses of these ancient cities rarely seen by most visitors, often capturing vistas that preserve specific moments in the history of the discovery and excavation of these sites.

Dr. Julia Guernsey, who teaches Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Art at UT Austin and is a frequent user of the Ferguson/Royce Archive, attests to the importance of this collaboration. "The Ferguson/Royce archive is a rich resource for students and scholars, as it provides rare views of sites and monuments, many of which would be impossible to duplicate today. Having the resource available online in a digitized form through ARTstor will be invaluable for both research and teaching." Max Marmor, ARTstor's Director of Collection Development, adds: "Our partnership with the Art and Art History Department at The University of Texas at Austin will significantly advance ARTstor's effort to provide a rich body of images of Pre-Columbian art and archaeology, for use by teachers, students and scholars. This is one of several important ARTstor projects involving the rich collections of The University of Texas at Austin.

Thirteen Towers of Chankillo Decoded

Photo: Ivan Ghezzi; National Aerial Service, Peru
Scientists say that this ancient toothed horizon served as part solar observatory at a ceremonial complex, right.

via NYTimes:
Stone Towers Are Decoded as Earliest Solar Observatory in the Americas
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: March 6, 2007

Early people in Peru, like others in antiquity, went to great lengths to track the rising and setting of the sun through the seasons as a guide for agriculture, an object of worship and a mystical demonstration of a ruler's power.

Archaeologists have now discovered that a line of elaborate stone towers erected on a low ridge by Peruvians 2,300 years ago formed an artificial toothed horizon with narrow gaps at regular intervals for making alignments almost exactly spanning the annual arc of the sun.

This is the earliest known solar observatory in the Americas. The site precedes by several centuries similar monuments by the Maya in Central America and by almost two millenniums solar observatories of the Inca civilization in Peru.

In a report in the current issue of the journal Science, a Peruvian archaeologist and a British archaeoastronomer wrote that the 13 towers, varying in height from 6 to 20 feet and extending 1,000 feet, are clearly visible from an imposing complex of concentric circles of relatively well-preserved walls enclosing ceremonial buildings. They said the position of the towers in relation to observation points inside the walled complex was firm evidence that this was a place for solar study in calendar-making and ritual ceremonies and feasts of sun cults.

The observatory, known as the Thirteen Towers of Chankillo, is in the Casma-Sechin River Basin of the coastal Peruvian desert, 240 miles north of Lima. Since the 19th century, archaeologists have speculated on the function of the walls and towers, whether the complex was a temple, the setting for ceremonial battles or a fort, the most common explanation.

Ivan Ghezzi, a doctoral student at Yale University who is studying ancient Peruvian warfare, visited Chankillo to investigate its battlements. Part of the complex did appear to be fortifications.

"In the first hours of measurements," Mr. Ghezzi said in a telephone interview from Lima, "we realized the nature and importance of the towers."

Clive Ruggles, an archaeoastronomer at the University of Leicester in England, joined Mr. Ghezzi, who is also director of the National Institute of Culture, in Peru, in the investigation. They concluded that Chankillo provided "evidence of early solar horizon observations and of the existence of sophisticated sun cults," beginning in the fourth century B. C.

Clark Erickson, an Andean archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the research, said he was convinced by the new findings. They are important, he said, because they reveal "what was going on in the heads of these people."

Obituary: William C. Sturtevant

The field of anthropology lost a leading figure with the passing, on Friday, March 2nd, of William C. Sturtevant, Curator of Ethnology at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution ...

Jason Baird Jackson writes an obituary of William C. Sturtevant in the blog Museum Anthropology. Of no small interest to this library was his contribution as editor-in-chief of the compendious Handbook of North American Indians:

Published by the Smithsonian, the handbook is a major multi-volume reference work summarizing anthropological, linguistic and historical knowledge about native peoples north of Mexico. Bearing the imprint of its editor, the thoroughness of the handbook has made it the essential resource for those interested in Native American societies. 

Americas reinstallation @ Field Museum

Reblogged from the Field Museum web site:

The Ancient Americas
 Opens March 9, 2007
 
 
Step into the windswept world of Ice-Age mammoth hunters. Walk through a replica of an 800-year-old pueblo dwelling and imagine your entire family cooking, eating, and sleeping in one small room. Explore the Aztec empire and its island capital, Tenochtitlan, a city of more than 200,000 people and an extraordinary feat of engineering for any era. Discover what Field Museum scientists and others have learned about the Americans who lived here before us, and how it’s changing nearly everything we thought we knew!
 
The Field Museum’s ground-breaking new exhibition, The Ancient Americas, takes you on a journey through 13,000 years of human ingenuity and achievement in the western hemisphere, where hundreds of diverse societies thrived long before the arrival of Europeans. In this 19,000-square-foot permanent exhibition you’ll live the epic story of the peopling of these continents, from the Arctic to the tip of South America. Discover how and why the early Americans developed farming, created new forms of artistic expression, and forged mighty empires. See more than 2,200 artifacts, amazing reconstructions, and dozens of videos and interactive displays, and come to understand the ingenuity with which ancient peoples met the challenges of their times and places…as we meet ours today.
 
 The Ancient Americas is made possible by the McCormick Tribune Foundation. The Farming Villagers Gallery is presented by the Abbott Fund. The Innovators Gallery is presented by ITW Foundation.

An interview with Gary Feinman (curator of Middle American Anthropology) and Jonathan Haas (MacArthur Curator, Anthropology of the Americas) appears in the Spring 2007 issue of In the Field.

Nasca Drum featured on Met Splash Page

The Splash Page of The Museum's website features a different object from the collection each day. Today, February 23, 3007, an object from the Department of AAOA is featured:

The figure sitting with legs drawn up atop this Peruvian drum is covered with complex symbols, among which are a snake that crawls from under the figure's chin and killer whales that outline each eye.

Drum, 1st century; Nasca
Nasca peoples; Peru, Nasca Valley
Ceramic; H. 17 3/4 in. (45.1 cm)

The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Wielgus, 1964 (1978.412.111)

See Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in the online collection for more information about this object.