Histories of Collecting, Displaying, and Caring for Pre-Hispanic Art

This session explores the histories of collecting, displaying, and caring for pre-Hispanic Indigenous arts of the Americas in private collections and museums. Questions that might be explored include the following: How have collectors or museums of various kinds differed in their practices, whether in one period or over time? What words have been used to categorize these items (e.g. art, artifact, cultural patrimony, ancestor’s belonging), and what have their connotations been? When and why has collecting or displaying certain items been promoted, critiqued, or prohibited, whether due to taste, legislation, or dialogue among curators, museum leadership, activists, collectors, donors, and politicians? What role has the art market played in creating or shaping collections? Since such collections were often launched ahead of professional curatorial expertise, how did acquisitions influence practices, including academic training, and how did a new field for curators develop? Finally, what light can understanding these histories shed on the future of this increasingly broad and complex field? We encourage presenters to consider how pre-Hispanic art provenance studies might make new meaning for Latin America’s Indigenous Heritage.

This is a companion to the session, “Where Do We Go from Here?: Museums and Latin America’s Indigenous Heritage.”