The joint Met/Getty Museum team tours the Peruvian site of Chan Chan. Photo courtesy of the author
«I recently embarked on a research trip that revealed new insights into the cultural contexts of some of the Met's most beloved objects made of gold, silver, and copper from Central and South America. The ancient artists that lived in present-day Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru produced incredible metal masterpieces now found in national, public, and private collections around the world. Though the specific focus of my trip was to study metallurgical traditions, visits to archaeological sites and new museums held many surprises pertaining to the arts of architecture, textiles, pottery, and even woodworking. Throughout the trip, I documented our team's visits to each place on Twitter. Here is a summary of the three-week journey from Panama to Peru, illustrated with a selection of the photos I tweeted.»
Panama
Prior to joining the Metropolitan, I was a postdoctoral associate at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, where I worked on the catalogue of their materials from the "Intermediate Area," which morphed into the "Central American and Colombian Art at Dumbarton Oaks" project. Archaeologists and art historians focusing on the ancient Americas largely assigned the prehistoric cultures of Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia to the "Intermediate Area." This concept became regarded as a murky region defined in negation: no monumental pyramids, no writing, no empires, and no "high civilization"—all of which were great academic concerns in the mid-twentieth century. To refocus attention on this important area, I, along with Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Studies Director Colin McEwan, received a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research to support an international workshop on the art and archaeology of Central America and Colombia.
The meeting was in conjunction with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City and was a resounding success, with presentations from researchers who work in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and the Greater Antilles.
Aside from accomplishing the workshop goals through presentations, working groups, and a field trip to the site of current excavations at the site of El Caño, visits to collections spurred ideas about some of the Met's early gold acquisitions and a stone sculpture.
Ecuador
Other connections to Met objects came from a visit to three museums in Ecuador's capital city, Quito, which is situated on the slope of a volcano in the highlands of the northern Andes. Our colleagues in the Department of Musical Instruments had recently shown us an Ecuadorian pan flute made of Andean condor feathers in their collection, which had an analogue in the Ethnographic Museum of Ecuador.
Other similar objects to those in New York included Valdivia figurines and two seated figures, the larger of which gazes out at visitors in gallery 357.
The most impressive works in Ecuador apart from ceramics are body adornments in gold, silver, copper, and platinum; in fact, ancient Ecuadorians were the only ones to work with platinum.
However, ancient Ecuador was the source of a material that Precolumbian peoples from Mexico to Chile valued more than gold itself: the blood-red or orange shell of the marine bivalves of the Spondylus genus. Colonial accounts tell of the natives' desire to travel long distances for the shell, a material so precious that it was crushed and sprinkled before the Inka emperors so that they would always walk on consecrated ground. Not only emperors wore Spondylus-studded garments; a visit to the small site museum of Sitio La Florida revealed ancestors with entire hooded ponchos made of Spondylus beads. The architect memorialized this prized material with a roof over the excavations inspired by the shell of the creature itself.
Peru
Sites and museums on the North Coast of Peru are at the forefront of two very important parts of archaeological and art-historical research: metals and archaeological conservation; and protecting cultural patrimony from the devastating effects of climate change. UNESCO World Heritage List sites such as Huaca de la Luna, Chan Chan, and others are in particular danger this year, as heavy rains are predicted as a result of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) effect. For the first time, the Peruvian government, through the Ministry of Culture, is investing millions of soles into the renovation of protective structures as a preventative measure before the ENSO-related rains come later in the year. The government has also increased measures to hinder encroachment of settlements, such as at the very early site of Ventarrón.
Because of spectacular and incomparable finds on the North Coast in the late 1980s and early '90s, Peruvian museums in the area grew some of the most impressive conservation labs to conserve and restore metal objects and other materials.
The local press coverage has been covering the intense investment in archaeological projects throughout the area, and documented our visits to sites and museums with the Ministry of Culture.
One true highlight was a guided tour through the Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipán with the excavator himself, Walter Alva, and his son, also an archaeologist in the area.
Several brand new museums in the area are leading the way with innovative community involvement, museum design, and interactive gallery interpretations.
Colombia
The ancient peoples of Colombia perfected and diversified many different techniques of metalworking. Outside of Colombia itself, the Metropolitan holds one of the strongest collections of the various art styles of Colombian gold. Three major collections contributed to the depth of the collection, the earliest of which was from Alice K. Bache, a local New York collector with a keen eye for gold objects. The transformative donation of Nelson Rockefeller's personal collection and that of his Museum of Primitive Art also included an array of Colombian metal arts. With the addition of the Jan Mitchell collection in the 1990s, the Met cemented its place as a leading institution in the conservation, research, and display of Precolumbian gold, silver, and copper objects.
Thus the research trip provided the perfect opportunity to visit our colleagues at the Museo del Oro in Bogotá. One of the leading attractions in the Colombian capital, the Museo del Oro is part of the Banco de la Republica, and has been the site of innovative research on metal object composition, metalworking technology, and the cultural and political contexts of gold objects in the past. The museum is also a leader in exhibition design.
There are many pieces in the Metropolitan's collection that compare to examples in the Museo del Oro. Most are adornments for use in rituals, or placed in burials as funerary regalia.
The Colombian artisans hammered gold into sheets, cast objects using the lost-wax process, sometimes cast and then hammered, and even soldered pieces together. One fascinating technique used by peoples in the Nariño region of southern Colombia was the application of organic or inorganic acids (in the form of soil or resins) to create a resist pattern with corrosion on the surface of gold-copper alloy objects. The result, depending on the amount of time that the acid was applied, was a mix of reddish-brown highlights on the gold objects. Some discs were found with strings through the hole in the center, leading researchers to hypothesize that the geometric surfaces, when rotated quickly, created a hypnotic effect on the viewer. Geometry plays a large role in the ancient arts of Colombia.
Some of the showstoppers are from a culture known as Malagana, from the Calima region. Looters discovered a huge cemetery in the early 1990s, and subsequent archaeological work defined a previously unknown cultural group that created spectacular gold objects both to wear and to use, such as a beautiful golden trumpet.
Thus after visits to four countries and countless museums and archaeological sites, new ideas will certainly inspire significant changes in the narrative of Precolumbian art here at the Met in the coming years. The trip also planted the seeds for international collaboration with colleagues in Latin America in future ventures.
Follow James on Twitter: @JamesDoyleMet