Description
Book SynopsisThis book traces the fascinating history of how and why ancient Mesoamerican objects have been collected. It begins with the pre-Hispanic antiquities that first entered European collections in the sixteenth century as gifts or seizures, continues through the rise of systematic collecting in Europe and the Americas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and ends in 1940—the start of Europe’s art market collapse at the outbreak of World War II and the coinciding genesis of the large-scale art market for pre-Hispanic antiquities in the United States. Drawing upon archival resources and international museum collections, the contributors analyze the ways shifting patterns of collecting and taste—including how pre-Hispanic objects changed from being viewed as anthropological and scientific curiosities to collectible artworks—have shaped modern academic disciplines as well as public, private, institutional, and nationalistic attitudes toward Mesoamerican art. As many nations across the world demand the return of their cultural patrimony and ancestral heritage, it is essential to examine the historical processes, events, and actors that initially removed so many objects from their countries of origin.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Art of Ancient Mesoamerica, Collections Forged before 1940 - Mary E. Miller From the Market to the Museum: Nineteenth-Century Circulation, Display, and Scholarly Study of Mesoamerican Artifacts in Italy and Beyond - Davide Domenici “An Idol, a Human Crane, an Incrusted Frilly Blue Mosaic Work Once Made for Magic Oracles”: Curious Things from Mexico in Early German Collections, 1525–1835 - Viola König Ciriaco González Carvajal and Archaeological Collectionism in Late Bourbon New Spain - Leonardo López Luján The Objects of History and the History of Objects - Matthew H. Robb The Chapultepec Castle Chimalli: A Habsburg-Repatriated Aztec Ocelot- Hide Shield - Laura Filloy Nadal and María Olvido Moreno Guzmán Collections and Recollections of “the Greatest of Nineteenth-Century Don Quixotes”: Maximilian I’s Imperial Legacy in the Yale Peabody Museum - Brooke Loukkala Beyond the Bazaar: The Making of the Archaeological Collection at the National Museum of Mexico - Miruna Achim National Guardians and Imperial Contenders: The Development of Mexico’s Archaeological Inspectorate - Adam T. Sellen Lost at the Exposition: The Missing Collection of the First National Museum of Guatemala - Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos Casting for Quirigua: Edgar L. Hewett, the School of American Archaeology and Ancient American Research, 1907–1916 - Khristaan D. Villela Maya on the Mersey: Thomas Gann and Collecting in Early Twentieth- Century Britain - Andrew D. Turner “American Antiquities for an American Museum”: Frederick Church, Luigi Petich, and the Founding Decades of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1870–1914) - Joanne Pillsbury World Collecting Mesoamerican Art before 1940: A New World of Latin American Antiquities Imperialist Ambitions, Black Gold, and Stone Figures: Collecting Huastec Sculptures before 1940 - Kim N. Richter Branding West Mexico: How Collectors and Dealers Reshaped the Archaeological Discourse - Christopher S. Beekman Changing Geographies of the Mesoamerican Antiquities Market circa 1940: Pierre Matisse and Earl Stendahl - Megan E. O’Neil Afterword: Object Amnesia and the Archive - Megan E. O’Neil
