South America

U.S. Embassy Museum Internship Program in Peru

For the eleventh consecutive year, the U.S. Embassy is sponsoring an internship program for American graduate students of museum and conservation programs to be held from July through August 2013. This program falls under the Embassy’s activities in support of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Cultural Patrimony Protection, signed between Peru and the United States in 1997 and renewed for the third time in 2012.
 
The objective of this program is to enable well-qualified graduate students the opportunity to do field research in Lima and Lambayeque. It will also support museums that house rich art collections, but are greatly in need of skilled professionals. This is a unique opportunity for self motivated students who want to experience firsthand with pre Hispanic artifacts and live in Peru.
 
These internships will provide an excellent opportunity for Peruvian and American colleagues to exchange ideas on new techniques related to conservation and cataloguing, with long-term possibilities for collaboration.
 
Three selected museums have presented projects and provided detailed outlines of the work to be performed. Professional museum staff will supervise each intern and costs will be shared among all parties. The Embassy will be the link between the universities and the Peruvian museums and will provide required materials. Each museum will be in charge of supervising the program. Also, the university or the intern will be responsible for international and national transportation and health insurance. The Embassy provides a small stipend to cover living expenses such as meals and incidentals.
 
All applicants must be U.S. citizens, must have at least intermediate oral Spanish skills, must be willing to complete the full course of the internship, and must be enrolled or have recently completed a graduate program in museum studies or a related field.
 
Interested candidates should submit a cover letter with the following information:
  • Name of applicant,
  • Name of specific internship program,
  • Name of current graduate program,
  • Honest assessment of Spanish ability which may be corroborated in a phone interview

Please also attach current curriculum vitae, a one-page essay explaining the student’s interest in the internship, and a letter of recommendation by a professor.
 
Send the above information to the attention of Vanessa Wagner de Reyna, email wagnerv@state.gov, fax: 011- (511) 618-2729 by March 30, 2013. Students will be notified if they have been accepted by mid-April. The Embassy will then provide additional information regarding travel, visas, and other requirements to the selected interns.
 
For more information, please visit: http://peru.usembassy.gov/internship.html

Art of Earth and Sky

Two new exhibits were recently announced:

“Art of Sky, Art of Earth: Maya Cosmic Imagery,” a new permanent exhibit, will open September 1 at Wake Forest University’s Museum of Anthropology.

“Veracruz: Ancient Cultures from Gulf of Mexico,” opens August 7 and runs until November 2009, at the Guanajuato Art and History Museum. Reportedly, some 80% of the objects are exhibited for the first time, and the exhibit will later travel to Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and Sao Paolo, in Brazil.

MIA Curatorship Goes to Africanist

It seems that the number of museum anthropologists filling curatorships in major art museums continues to grow. As reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, "The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has hired Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers to head its department of African, Oceanic, and Native American Art starting June 9." Grootaers is a University of Chicago-trained anthropologist who has worked among the Zande of the Central African Republic. Find the story here.

Vanishing Worlds: Art and Ritual in Amazonia

From a BMA Press Release:

From March 30 to July 27, The Birmingham Museum of Art presents "Vanishing Worlds: Art and Ritual in Amazonia," an exhibition of spectacular and rare works of Amazonian material culture, including full body costumes, masks, feather headdresses, body ornaments, baskets, weapons, pottery, and textiles.

The carefully crafted and vibrantly colored objects were made for use in rituals and ceremonies central to the life of Amazonian peoples, and range in age from 30 to 100 years. Many were worn by shamans and other community members during rituals such as name-giving ceremonies for the young, initiation into adulthood, and rituals surrounding death and bereavement, harvest, and healing.

"The incredible art and material culture of the Amazon has not been widely shown or published - it is not well known," says Emily Hanna, Curator of the Arts of Africa and the Americas at the Birmingham Museum of Art. "These masterful works are compelling not only for their brilliant forms, but for their profound significance within the culture. We are very pleased to be able to bring these works to Birmingham."

The objects in Vanishing Worlds exhibit exquisite artistry and, although utilitarian, are masterpieces of color and design. They are made from materials gathered from the forest, including wood and bark, beetle wings, grasses, shells, seeds, clay, and beeswax. Perhaps the most visually stunning objects are made with brilliantly colored feathers of some 40 species of birds, including parrots, macaws, and herons. These artworks give shape to belief, and embody tightly woven relationships between the human community and natural environment, and between the visible and invisible worlds.

The exhibition highlights eight tribal groups, including people of the Ka'apor, Karajá, Tapirapé, Ticuna, Shipibo-Conibo, Shuar, Kayapó, and Xingu River regions. These groups inhabit a vast area that ranges from the Atlantic coast of Brazil to the foothills of the Andes in Peru and Ecuador. Prior to European exploration in 1500, some three to five million people lived in the Amazon River basin. Today fewer than 100,000 Amazonian tribal people survive in an area that covers 2.5 million square miles. While most of the cultures represented by artifacts in this exhibition still exist, the vast majority of the tribes of the Amazon have disappeared. The unique and fragile works in Vanishing Worlds reflect the threatened existence of their creators, as well as the crisis of the rainforest environment in which they were made.

This exhibition was organized by the Houston Museum of Natural Science and has been shown at the Cantor Art Center of Stanford University, the Mayborn Museum at Baylor University, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Art and Archeology. The Birmingham Museum of Art is the final venue for the exhibition.

IMAGE: Mekragnoti: Headdress, Kayapo-Mekragnoti people, Brazil, vegetal fibers, feathers from Scarlet Macaw, Blue-and-yellow Macaw, Hyacinth Macaw. The Adam Mekler Collection Courtesy of The Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS Kayapo: Mekgragnoti 005).

The Finishing Touch: Accessories from the Bolivian Highlands

From a Textile Museum Press release:

UPCOMING EXHIBITION CELEBRATES BOLIVIA'S CULTURAL WEALTH

"The Finishing Touch: Accessories from the Bolivian Highlands," is on View at The Textile Museum February 15 through September 18, 2008

Washington, D.C. (January 8, 2008) - "The Finishing Touch: Accessories from the Bolivian Highlands," on view at The Textile Museum February 15 through September 18, 2008, invites visitors to explore the liveliness and diversity of the region's woven and knitted textiles. The Museum's first new exhibition of 2008, "The Finishing Touch" features a charming group of belts, bags and other accessories made and used by the indigenous people of the Bolivian highlands.

A large group of traditional Bolivian textiles acquired by the Museum in late 2007 inspired the exhibition and comprises the bulk of the more than 100 objects on view. Complementing these objects are other Bolivian textiles drawn from The Textile Museum's collection. "The Finishing Touch: Accessories from the Bolivian Highlands" is curated by Ann P. Rowe, the Museum's Curator of Western Hemisphere Collections.

About the Textiles in the Exhibition

Although small, the belts, bags, hats and other accessories from this region are often made with great care and even more fully decorated than larger shawls and ponchos. Some are worn as part of the daily dress, while more elaborate examples were made solely for festival costumes. The bags serve a variety of purposes, from decorative accents in festival dress to utilitarian containers for the farmer's lunch in the fields. The exhibition also features other garments, such as the Charazani area women's headband, still called by its Inca name, wincha, and the small shoulder ponchos of the Tarabuco area, still called unku, the Inca word for tunic.

Representations of Changing Traditions

The broad range of techniques and patterns in the exhibition reflects the many variations of Bolivian highland textiles. The textiles in the exhibition were made by the indigenous Aymara and Quechua-speaking population in the early to mid-20th century using handspun wool yarns. Collected in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when such examples were readily available, they now represent an earlier tradition that has evolved - and changed the overall look of handmade cloth - with the now more prevalent use of commercially produced yarns.

The changing political landscape has also impacted the region's textiles. The items in the exhibition incorporate indigenous techniques, patterns and garments that date back to the pre-Hispanic past as well as motifs and techniques adopted from Spanish culture. A unique indigenous tradition includes the development of several complex three-color patterning techniques, used to create designs on one side of a piece that repeat in reversed colors on the other side, but without color mixing so that the piece is double-sided.

Beyond the techniques used, the large variety of design motifs adorning the belts, bags, hats and other items in the exhibition reveal both Spanish influence - such as motifs of horses - as well as indigenous derivation - including fanciful animals and a large variety of geometric designs, capable of endless permutations.

A Knitting Technique No Longer Used in Europe

The Spaniards introduced knitting to the Bolivian highlands in the colonial period, some 200 to 500 years ago. The relative isolation of the groups in the Bolivian highlands has resulted in the preservation of these original knitting methods, which are no longer practiced in Europe. In this method, the yarn is passed around the neck to keep it under tension and the knitting is done in the round on the purl side, throwing the yarn with the left thumb. Unlike weaving, knitting can easily be used as a sculptural technique, and the Museum's exhibition includes several examples of peaked caps derived from regional weaving traditions, and charming bags made in the form of dolls.

About The Textile Museum

Established in 1925 by George Hewitt Myers, The Textile Museum is an international center for the exhibition, study, collection and preservation of the textile arts. The Museum explores the role that textiles play in the daily and ceremonial life of individuals the world over. Special attention is given to textiles of the Near East, Asia, Africa and the indigenous cultures of the Americas. The Museum also presents exhibitions of historical and contemporary quilts, and fiber art. With a collection of more than 18,000 textiles and rugs and an unparalleled library, The Textile Museum is a unique and valuable resource for people locally, nationally and internationally.

The Textile Museum is located at 2320 'S' Street, NW in Washington, D.C. The Museum is open Monday through Saturday 10:00 am to 5:00 pm and Sunday 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $5.00 for non-members. For further information, call 202-667-0441 or visit www.textilemuseum.org.

In fall 2008 The Textile Museum will open a second site, dedicated to exhibitions and educational activities, in Washington, D.C.'s thriving Penn Quarter neighborhood. For more information about this exciting initiative, visit www.textilemuseum.org/secondsite.htm.

Alex Barker Quoted in Useful Machu Picchu Story

Scott Jaschik, who recently authored a useful account for Inside Higher Eductaion of the debate over the AAA publishing program (of which Museum Anthropology is a part), has more recently contributed a story (also in IHE) on the agreement by Yale University's Peabody Museum to repatriate Machu Picchu collections to Peru. Council for Museum Anthropology vice president Alex Barker is quoted extensively in the article, which will probably be of interest to many in the museum anthropology community.

The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village

The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village. Frank Salomon. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. 331 pp.

John H. McDowell

Frank Salomon, professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, is among the most prominent of living Andeanists, having authored important historical and ethnographic studies and having prepared, in partnership with George Urioste, the definitive text of the famous Huarochirí manuscript, an early colonial-era compendium of localized mythic narrative. Indeed, Salomon’s interest in the Huarochirí document caused him to travel the highland district that gave birth to it, and there, by “a fluke of ethnographic luck” (p. 3), he came across a contemporary usage of khipus, the record-keeping cords of knotted fiber that count as one of the great mysteries and great achievements of Andean societies. Salomon was lucky, as well, in the timing of this discovery, which coincided with a growing interest among villagers in “Inka” symbolism and the connection between the khipus and this revered ancestral past.

The present monograph is an attempt to further our understanding of the wide-spread khipu tradition by delving into local knowledge and practice in the village of Tupicocha, in the sierra that rises to the east of Lima, where patrimonial khipus are retained by ayllus, corporate descent groups, and utilized in ayllu ceremonial politics. What results is a brilliant piece of detective work that assembles a diverse range of cues and clues and weaves them into a plausible account of how khipus might have functioned as data-encoding systems during the several centuries they persisted as the primary means for recording and conserving information in a world region that famously remained without writing even as it developed a highly complex civilization.

In the absence of resources that reliably explicate how this “technology of knowledge” might have operated—the craft was suppressed after 1583 by the Spanish and the last competent local practitioners disappeared in the early decades of the 20th century—Salomon adduces evidence both ethnohistorical and ethnographic to mount an engaging argument that originates in the Huarochirí province and in the specific code properties of its khipus but carries us far beyond these points of origin into a sustained encounter with the semiotics of sign systems, with Andean ethnohistory, and with the essence of what it means to be Andean.

The cumulative effect of reading this book is to agree with the author that the question, Did the Inkas have writing?, should be scuttled in favor of adopting a mindset attuned to cultures organized around the manipulation of fiber, where life is lived like a khipu, where canal systems resemble giant khipus on the land, and where the cords of a khipu can map the terrain even as they inscribe the progress and completion of such procedures as assigning labor, keeping track of material resources, and coordinating the interaction of political entities. Basing his reasoning on the evidence he has uncovered, Salomon presents khipus as “operation devices” (p. 273) that mirror in their structure the structure of the social occasions that created them. He states that “khipu recording was not only about the community—a controlling simulacrum, and important as such—but was itself the means of producing the community performatively” (p. 269). Salomon proposes that khipus, at least in the Tupicochan setting, functioned at one time as encodings of planning sessions, where responsibilities were negotiated, and of accounting sessions, where reckonings of performance were made and collectively ratified. In contemporary Tupicocha, these khipus are used mostly for ceremonial purposes, as emblems of local identity on official occasions, though they retain a curious half-life and afterlife, in Salomon’s terms, to which I will return below.

Let me briefly profile some of the significant areas of argumentation in this book. Regarding the interpretation of meaning in the khipu, Salomon offers a technical exposition with two primary threads: one, an inquiry into the type of signification operating in khipu art and the other, an exhaustive treatment of the elements of khipu signification and what kinds of data they most likely encode. Regarding the former, a key question is whether the khipu is predicated on spoken language—is it a lexigraph, a sign vehicle that corresponds to segments of speech? Salomon argues for a relation of complementarity between the khipu and speech, holding that information stored on khipus can be articulated in speech but does not depend on speech in the way that most familiar writing systems, for example, do. He views khipus as semasiographs, that is, signs that stand for the referents themselves, as in notational, pictographic, and token systems. He notes that semasiographs “are superior where different users have a substantial domain of culture in common, but little spoken language in common” (p. 27), a situation that obtained over the vast territory controlled by the Inka Empire.

In Salomon’s view, the semiotics of khipus are pragmatic rather than grammatical, and “the record-keeping art takes shape around the social problems it solves” (p. 28). He notes that, “the khipu’s surface regularities are likely to bear the stamp of schemata repeatedly employed to effect the social ends of gatherings where they were present” (p. 38). Sorting out these regularities and the schemata they might represent is the most technical component of this ambitious study, and if one is willing to follow the argument, a viable portrait of khipu signification emerges. Figure 26, the Key Figure (150-151), is a sketch of a composite Tupicochan khipu that captures most of the structural features presumably implicated in khipu signification. There are a great many variables capable of fashioning a difference in meaning: the color of threads, their size, the placement of knots, the kinds of knots used, the attachment of pendants, the grouping of cords into like-color bands, the use of specific colors as run-through elements—these and other dimensions of khipu art lend themselves to signification. As Salomon’s exegesis of khipu construction proceeds, it becomes clear that corded fiber is a remarkably potent medium for encoding bits of information.

Salomon draws on two related technologies of knowledge practiced in villages like Tupicocha to suggest the means and functions of khipu signification. One of these is the visual codes carved into staffs of office in Tupicocha. These designs carry information about the hierarchy of local offices and are distributed through a process of collective negotiation in a ceremonial forum. Much like the khipus, in Salomon’s view, the visual designs encode a process of social collaboration, but in this case within a much more limited semiotic medium. Also of consequence to the argument are practices associated with ayllu books that have been used for some time now in communities like Tupicocha to record duties to be performed and resources communally held. These books are updated annually and are employed to plan and then certify performance of communal labor. The occasion for updating the books, as is true for the carving of the staffs, is a ceremonial one, with ritual drinking, dancing, and the performance of music. Salomon proposes that practices observed in these media are congruent with practices associated with the making and remaking of khipus during the period when they were the medium of choice for recording these kinds of information.

Although apparently no living person commands the language of the khipus, there is a local lore that conserves a good many details of khipu art and signification. Salomon gathers and surveys this fount of information to good effect, and at this stage the various branches of his argument begin to cohere into an account with considerable credibility. An interesting episode revolves around the reconstructions of Nery Javier Rojas, who as a young fellow spent a good deal of time with his grandfather, one of the last khipu masters, and committed to memory much of what he learned from this elder relative. Salomon refers to the store of information preserved in contemporary commentary as the half-life of the khipu medium, and he takes note as well of what he calls its afterlife, invented traditions centering on the khipus that may nonetheless reveal or confirm an authentic approach or concept. He coins the term “khipumancy” to refer to a well-entrenched practice centered on the “fall” of khipu cords in divinatory sessions.

Salomon has produced a challenging and rewarding study that takes us deep within the core of highland cultures in the Andes. His work here builds upon a strong tradition of khipu research and extends previous understandings by bringing into the picture a well-documented case study of khipu practices in a specific locale. Salomon integrates his findings into this literature by proposing Tupicocha as a regional variant, a vernacular or grassroots off-shoot, sharing many common features with the inventory of Inka khipus held in museums around the world but adapted to the purposes of local rather than imperial authority. Of necessity, his conclusions are speculative, but they are grounded on a firm foundation of evidence and exposition, and as a consequence they approach and enter into the realm of the believable.

This study is surely not the final word on khipu art and signification; as Salomon notes in closing, a new database (in progress) of khipus in museums, and the encounter of new khipus in undisturbed archaeological sites, are likely to produce conditions for evaluating the arguments he advances in this book and pushing towards that breakthrough that would allow a definitive reading of these Andean artifacts, characterized by Salomon as “perhaps the most complex and versatile of data writings” (p. 281) in the world’s diversified repertoire of information-encoding systems.

John H. McDowell is Professor of Folklore at Indiana University. His ethnographic research has led to extensive work in a number of cultural settings in the United States, Mexico, and the Andes. His Andean studies are reported in numerous works, including “So Wise Were Our Elders”: Mythic Narratives of the Kamsá (University Press of Kentucky, 1994). Currently working on a number of archival and digital exhibition projects, his most recent book is Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico’s Costa Chica (University of Illinois Press, 2000).

Amazonian Exhibit Travels to Penn

Vanishing Worlds: Art and Ritual of Amazonia, a traveling exhibition of more than 150 rare and extraordinary objects, offers insight into the cultures and traditions of diverse native peoples of South America's Amazon region.

On view at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, March 3 - June 30, 2007

Scientists believe that people have inhabited the Amazon region for at least 15,000 years. Prior to European contact, between three and five million people thrived in the Amazon region, an ecologically diverse land of 2.5 million square miles, home to lush rainforests, savannas and an unparalleled array of plants and wildlife. Today, fewer than 100,000 Amazonian native people survive.

This exhibition, organized by the Houston Museum of Natural Science, offers a look into the traditional cultures of diverse peoples located in areas that stretch from the Atlantic coast of Brazil to the foothills of the Andes, south of the Amazon River. The objects in the exhibition come from the Ka’apor, Karajá, Tapirapé, Ticuna, Shipibo-Conibo, Shuar, Kayapó, and Xingu River region peoples. Colorful headdresses, masks, body ornaments, and full body costumes, as well as domestic and utilitarian pieces like basketry, weapons, pottery and textiles, are showcased.

Read more from the Penn Museum news release here.

Image caption: Kayapó-Mekrãgnoti headdress, roriro ri. Worn by adult men during various ceremonies. Photo © Houston Museum of Natural Science.