Robert-Goldwater-Library

American Indian Heritage Month @ MMA

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art Education Newsletter, November/December 2007:

 Celebrate the opening of the New Gallery for the Art of Native North America on November 14 with these programs.

Gallery Talks
Details

Friday, November 16, 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, November 27, 10:00 a.m.
Wednesday, December 12, 10:00 a.m.
New Gallery for the Art of Native North America
Edith Watts

Films
Details

Tuesday, November 20, 2:00 p.m.
The Crooked Beak of Heaven (1976), produced by David Attenborough (52 min.)
Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall, Uris Center for Education

Thursday, November 29, 2:00 p.m.
In the Land of the Totem Poles (1999), directed by Michel Viotte (51 min.)
Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall, Uris Center for Education

If you enjoyed receiving news about The Metropolitan Museum of Art, we invite you to sign up for our free email newsletters. See My Met Museum.

Illustrations from "Antigüedades Peruanas" on Flickr

An interesting new development in the 'digitization' of books is reported in a recent post by BibliOdyssey, one of particular interest to our readers.

Sixty-two plates from Antigüedades Peruanas (1851) by Rivera and Tschudi have been uploaded to flickr and are freely available for researchers and admirers of this gorgeously illustrated work. (For those nearer to the Goldwater Library, you can also consult the original: YH R62a SpecColl-Folio)

As peakay of BibliOdyssey glosses it,

In the 1830s and 1840s, Peruvian museum curator Mariano Eduardo de Rivero and Swiss naturalist Dr Johann Jakob von Tschudi undertook a survey of all known relics, ruins, records, bones, artefacts and artworks relating to the pre-Columbian civilisations of Peru.

The resultant 1851 book, 'Antigüedades Peruanas', was a thorough and critical archaeological, ethnographic and anthropological review for its time, although their conclusions about, for instance, racial groupings have been superseded.

A digitized version of the English-language translation (1855), which is less lavishly illustrated, is currently freely available through the Internet Archive.

This carries on the continuing work of BibliOdyssey to highlight historic illustrations available on the web. Previous posts include portraits of Native North American chiefs, McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America (1836-1844), Guaman Poma's Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno, and Captain James Cook's Voyage to the Pacific Ocean of 1784.

Andre Emmerich, art dealer and Precolumbian scholar

From the NYTimes, Sept. 26, 2007:

ANDRÉ EMMERICH, EMINENT ART DEALER, DIES AT 82
By Grace Glueck

André Emmerich, an influential Manhattan art dealer whose gallery was an early champion of the 1950s and ’60s school of Color Field painting and who also mounted important shows of pre-Columbian art, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 82.

His wife, Susanne, who confirmed the death, said he had had a stroke early this month.

Suave, erudite and faultlessly tailored, Mr. Emmerich presided over an extensive stable of American and European contemporary artists from 1954 to 1998, mounting elegant presentations in his pristine, understated uptown galleries, first on East 64th Street and then, from 1959 to 1998, in the Fuller Building on 57th Street ....

Always interested in the work of ancient peoples, Mr. Emmerich mounted insightful exhibitions of pre-Columbian art and classical antiquities. He became an authority on pre-Columbian art, lecturing and writing two books on the subject: “Art Before Columbus” (1963), and “Sweat of the Sun and Tears of the Moon — Gold and Silver in Pre-Columbian Art” (1965), a scholarly survey. He stopped showing the work because of increasing export restrictions.

In 1996, Mr. Emmerich sold his gallery to Sotheby’s but continued to direct it. After a run of 45 years, however, it was closed by Sotheby’s in 1998.

Mr. Emmerich had recently worked on an autobiography, “My Life With Art,” excerpts of which have been published in Art News, The Wall Street Journal and The New Criterion ...

(Read full article here)

Yale Officials Agree to Return Peruvian Artifacts

Photo: Michael McDonough

via nytimes.com:

By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: September 17, 2007

After a long standoff with the government of Peru, Yale University has agreed to return a large group of artifacts that were excavated at Machu Picchu in a historic dig by a Yale explorer in 1912 and that Peru contends were merely on loan and should have been returned long ago.

For several years Yale had argued that it had returned all borrowed objects in the 1920s, retaining only those to which it had full title. Yale proposed dividing possession of the artifacts. But negotiations between the university and the administration of President Alejandro Toledo, who was in power from 2001 until July 2006, broke down, and Peru threatened last year to go to court.

On Friday night Yale officials and a Peruvian delegation that traveled to New Haven signed a preliminary agreement that would return title to Peru of more than 350 artifacts — ceramics and metal and stone objects — that are considered to be of museum quality and several thousand fragments, bones and other objects considered to be primarily of interest to researchers.

The agreement, which establishes an extensive collaborative relationship between Yale and Peru, provides for an international traveling exhibition. Admission fees will be used to help build a new museum and research center in Cuzco, the city closest to Machu Picchu. The museum, for which Yale will serve as adviser, is expected to be completed in 2010.

Some of the research-quality artifacts will remain at Yale, while others will be returned, though legal title to all the items will be held by Peru. Yale will also contribute what one university official called a “significant” amount of money to establish a program of scholarly exchanges that will continue for at least three years.

“We aim to create a new model for resolving competing interests in cultural property,” Yale’s president, Richard C. Levin, said yesterday about the agreement. “This can best be achieved by building a collaborative relationship — one which involves scholars and researchers from Yale and Peru — that serves science and human understanding.” [read full story]

Read the joint statement by the Government of Peru and Yale University

Our earlier posts:

Yale Bingham collection dispute yields an agreement 8/16/07
Dispute continues over Bingham's Machu Picchu finds 6/25/07
Inca Show Pits Yale Against Peru 2/1/06

Hispanic Heritage Month events @ MMA

The following events featuring arts from the Hispanic New World were excerpted from the electronic Education News for September/October 2007:

Hispanic Heritage Month

Gallery Talks
Details

 Sunday, September 16, 11:00 a.m.
Sunday, October 7, 1:00 p.m.
The Art of Empowerment: Vodun in Africa and the Americas
Gayle Rodda Kurtz

 Sunday, September 30, 11:00 a.m.
Saturday, October 6, 11:00 a.m.
Images of Fertility in Mesoamerican Art
Taryn Matusik

Sunday, September 30, 1:00 p.m.
Precolumbian Masks: Expressions of Reality
Lauren Ebin

Sunday, October 14, 11:00 a.m.
Only Human? An Exploration of Figural Imagery in
Precolumbian Art
Lauren Ebin

Film
Details

Thursday, October 25, 2:00 p.m.
Tuesday, October 30, 2:00 p.m.
Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall, Uris Center for Education
Food for the Ancestors (1999), directed by Jan Thompson (57 min.)

Peru Earthquake: Remembering Pisco

Photo: Steve Burt

via Peru Food, Tuesday, August 21, 2007:

Peru Earthquake: Remembering Pisco
I'm sorry but I can't blog about Peruvian food this week; my most recent thoughts about Peru still have to do with last week's devastating earthquake. Bear with me.

Prior to the earthquake, the city of Pisco (about two hours south of Lima) was a historic small town, famous for its colonial architecture, its rich fishing and trading history, and the fact it gives its name to the most traditional Peruvian spirit: pisco.

For thousands of years prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the region was home to ancient Peruvians who thrived due to its proximity to abundant sea life. The Spanish founded the colonial city in 1640, and during the Viceregal period, it was an important port for the Peruvian colony. In 1820, Peru's liberator, José de San Martín, disembarked in Pisco and lived there for a short while. The first flag of independent Peru was designed in Pisco.

It is a region long visited by many tourists, both local and foreign, because of its rich agriculture, its wine and pisco producing heritage, and its proximity to some of Peru's most beautiful coastline, located in the National Paracas Reserve, which includes the Ballesta Islands, home to rich marine and bird life.

Now, Pisco has been destroyed. Surely, it will rise again, as it did after the earthquake of 1680, but with 80% of its buildings in ruins, the new Pisco will no longer have the genteel colonial air it once had.

These photos are of a Pisco that is no longer.

more info on the earthquake:

Pianist Alexander Paley to Perform Concert in Lima for Peru's Earthquake Victims
Latest News in Peru / Archive
Art/Culture/History | 24 August, 2007 [ 18:30 ]

Recovering from the Peru Earthquake
TIME Magazine, Monday, Aug. 20, 2007 By LUCIEN CHAUVIN/PISCO

Peru earthquake death toll rises
Forbes, 08.17.07, 2:29 AM ET

The Night the Andes Shook
TIME Magazine, Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007 By LUCIEN CHAUVIN/LIMA

Peru quake aftershocks rattle survivors, rescuers
by Reynaldo Munoz
PISCO, Peru, Aug 16, 2007 (AFP)

Peru earthquake kills hundreds
By Laura Puertas and Jon Elsen
International Herald Tribune, August 16, 2007

Residents standing in front of their houses after heavy waves hit a neighborhood known as 'La Siberia', near the port city of Callao, Peru, on Thursday. (Juan Carlos Guzman/Agencia Andina via AP)

Archaeology magazine, Sept./Oct. 2007

Selected features of interest in the September/October 2007 issue:

• From the President: Common Ground: Can archaeologists and museums work together?, by C. Brian Rose
• Destination: We asked pioneering archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni of Colgate University to name his favorite overlooked site
• Feature: A tangled journey home: Priceless artifacts return to Italy and Greece, but their histories remain lost, by Eti Bonn-Muller and Eric A. Powell.
• Museums: Ancient Americans (The Field Museum)
• Insider: The once and future Maya, by David Freidel [online version is an abstract]
• Letter from Peru: Mystery circles of the Andes, by Roger Atwood [online version is an abstract]

Yale Bingham collection dispute yields an agreement

From the Hartford Courant, August 14, 2007, via Archaeologymagazine.com

Yale Will Give Peru A List Of Artifacts
Move May Ease Dispute Over Machu Picchu Discoveries
By KIM MARTINEAU

Yale has agreed to turn over to Peru an inventory of artifacts that explorer Hiram Bingham III carted back with him to New Haven after excavating Machu Picchu, the "lost" city of the Incas, in the Andean mountains nearly a century ago.

The breakthrough, which may ultimately help decide who gets to keep the ancient Incan artifacts, was reached this summer under Peru's new president, who appears willing to settle the dispute without resorting to the lawsuit threatened by his predecessor.

Peru's housing minister is expected to lead a delegation of Peruvians to New Haven next month to continue talks with Yale.

"Why should we pursue a lawsuit?" said Vladimír Kocerha, a spokesman for the Peruvian Embassy in Washington, D.C. "Things are progressing. We are talking to them. They are talking to us."

• Read more of the story

Aztec Mexico, courtesy of BibliOdyssy

 Figura Uitzilopuchtli, idolo principal de los Mexicanos

A blog called BibliOdyssy has recently posted images and excerpts from something called the Tovar manuscript, followed by this brief explanation w/ links:

Juan de Tovar (1543-1623) was born in Mexico from conquistador stock. He trained as a Jesuit priest and was known as the Mexican Cicero because of his eloquent preaching style and mastery of several indigenous languages.

At the request of the Spanish Court, Tovar set about preparing a pre-conquest ethnographic history of the Aztec peoples. He travelled widely, interviewing native Indians, from whom he also commissioned traditional pictographic sketches.

The Tovar manuscript (also known as the Ramírez Codex¹) consists of three main sections: an historical account of "the ancient Mexicans from their first migration into the central valley of Mexico, to their conquest by the Spaniards"; an illustrated history of the Aztecs (most images above); and the Tovar Calendar - an attempt to combine the Nahuatl calendar with christian Saint days. The manuscript dates to about 1585.

The Tovar manuscript, bearing the title: 'Historia de la benida de los yndios apoblar a Mexico de las partes remotas de Occidente los sucessos y perigrinaçiones del camino su gouierno, ydolos y templos dellos, ritos y cirimonias ... calandarios delos tiempos' is online among the Archive of Early American Images at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, Rhode Island.

This is an absolutely outstanding collection, with more than 4000 images of 'books, maps, and manuscripts relating to the colonial period of the Americas, North and South, from 1492 to ca. 1825'. I am amazed I had never, to my recall, seen this InsightBrowser site before. I've only had a very modest perusal of their holdings so far, but I will definitely return in the near future. It's great to see any material relating to the Caribbean and the Guyanas, but there is so much more in here. The extent of the background notes is commendable too.

• These few links give some measure of background, but I didn't find too much that seemed like a confident authority on all of this.
• Previously: MesoAmerica

1. Brown University owns the original of the Tovar manuscript and it seems like it is the only complete version in existence. Brown U refer to a single section of their manuscript as being the Ramírez Codex. But the Ramírez Codex is housed in Mexico and I assume it is the only other extant copy of the pictographic section of the Tovar manuscript, hence the names get interchanged. There is a LOT more complexity in the background to all this - a mysterious 'Chronicle X' which is said to have been an older source document for both Tovar and at least one other contemporary historian; plus, there was a significant amount of censorship and also uncredited borrowing -- how much of this either is true or has bearing on Tovar's manuscript is beyond the scope of my brief review.

Below are a few images -- for more images + excerpts, go to the original post.



Cuevas de los siete linajes que poblaron en México y alrededor dél



Xocotlhuetzi

Ydolo particular de Tlaxcala

 

NG investigates the Maya collapse

Scholars have long puzzled over the Maya civilization's rise to glory and fall to ruin. The latest thinking is that a man named Fire Is Born made the Maya great. But no one person or problem caused the collapse. Simply put, everything went wrong.

The cover story of the August 2007 issue of National Geographic Magazine explores current theories on the rise and fall of the Maya. Joining the standard NG treatment ('imaginative' drawings recreating moments in Maya history) are selected art objects and dramatic photography of Maya sites. The online version of the magazine includes features such as an interactive map and interviews with the writer and photographer, and related links to other NG features, web sites and printed books and articles.