Beneath the Surface: Life, Death and Gold in Ancient Panama

Beneath the Surface: Life, Death, and Gold in Ancient Panama, at the Penn Museum until November 1, 2015, explores the history of, archaeological evidence about, and new research perspectives on the Coclé people who lived from about 700 to 900 CE. Video footage from the original Sitio Conte excavation and more than 200 objects from the famous excavation provide an immersive experience in this installation. One massive burial, dubbed “Burial 11” by the excavators, yielded the most extraordinary materials from the excavation. Believed to be that of a paramount chief, it contained twenty-three individuals in three distinct layers, accompanied by a vast array of grave objects. A to-scale installation of the burial serves as the exhibition’s centerpiece and features many artifacts displayed in the actual positions in which they were found, as well as digital interactive stations that allow for further exploration.

View the exhibition's official website.

Les Aztèques, peuple du Soleil

Developed in collaboration with the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History, the Pointe-à-Callière Museum of Archaeology and History of Montreal is presenting the story of one of Central America’s most fascinating civilizations with Les Aztèques, peuple du soleil (The Aztec, People of the Sun). The exhibition is comprehensive in its approach and explores subjects such as everyday life, agriculture, war, architecture, religion, human sacrifice, the worship of the gods and the sun, the calendar, and the well-known codices. Through a selection of 275 objects on loan from Mexican museums, the show’s overview of Aztec culture showcases some of the major artworks that comprise its patrimony. Prominent among these are two monumental terracotta sculptures from the Templo Mayor; a well-known vase that represents the rain god Tláloc; a rare wooden mask inlaid with turquoise, shell, and mother-of-pearl; and many other not-to-be-missed masterpieces.

Visit the PAC Musée website.

Gold of the Ancient Americas

On view now at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is Gold of the Ancient Americas, an exhibition showcasing more than 50 artifacts, including cast animal pendants, a hammered gold disc, beaded necklaces and nose ornaments made by the indigenous peoples of the ancient Americas from Peru to Panama. The exhibition explores the Walters’ collection of gold ornaments crafted in Central and South America between AD 500 and 1500, alongside gifts to the collection from several generous donors. A mix of art and science, the exhibition tells the story of ancient societies through their use of gold as a symbol of power, wealth, and privilege, and highlights the making of gold objects by ancient American goldsmiths before the Spanish conquest.

Visit the Walters Art Museum website.

Images courtesy of the Walters Art Museum

L'Inca et le Conquistador

L’Inca et le conquistador (The Inca and the Conquistador), a new exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly, uses artistic creations by the Inca and by the Spanish to tell both sides of the story of the conquest of Peru and to illustrate the confrontations that resulted from contact between two radically different worlds. Conceived by curator Paz Núnez-Regueiro, the exhibition focuses on two protagonists, the Inca sovereign Atahualpa and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, whose interactions provoked a profound political, economic, cultural, and religious revolution in both of their empires. The paintings, weapons, textiles, gold objects, ceramics, maps, and engravings, mostly from the museum’s own collection, together tell this epic story and shed light on this mutual encounter with the “other.”

View the exhibition's official website.

Gold figurine  -  Inca, Peru  -  15th–16th century 

Portrait of Huayna Capac, Inca XII

Portrait of Atahualpa, Inca XIV

Male figure  -  Inca, Peru  -  15th–16th century

New installation for pre-Columbian art at Princeton University Art Museum,

On February 3, 2015, the Princeton University Art Museum unveiled a new installation for its collection of the traditional arts of the Americas. The dramatic new gallery showcases the range of artistic production from the ancient American past as well as Native American arts from more recent times. Geographically, the collection ranges from the Diaquita culture of Chile to the Inuit peoples of Alaska. The majority of the material in the new installation is pre-Columbian, and within this collection the chronological and spatial ranges are marked by hallmark examples from major ancient American cultures, including a number of well-known masterpieces of Mesoamerican art, particularly from the Olmec and Maya peoples.

Find out more at the Princeton University Art Museum website.

Double-faced female figure  -  Tlatilco, Mexico  -  1500–1200 B.C.

Stele  -  Maya, 300–500 A.D.

Mask  -  Aztec, Mexico  -  1400–1520 A.D.

Images courtesy of Princeton University

Les rois mochica: Divinité et pouvoir dans le Pérou ancien

For its reopening, the Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève (MEG) is holding a world-premiere exhibition of the treasures from a royal Moche tomb that was excavated by Steve Bourget and his team in the summer of 2008. The hitherto unseen pieces from the Huaca El Pueblo archaeological site near the village of Ucupe on the north coast of Peru form the nucleus of this exhibition, which will be on view until May 3, 2015. It also features exceptional pieces from other royal tombs, including those of Sipán and Dos Cabezas. With more than 300 works, of which sixty are on loan from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture and 180 from European museums including those of Berlin, Stuttgart, and Schaffhausen, Les rois mochica. Divinité et pouvoir dans le Pérou ancien (Moche Kings: Divinity and Power in Ancient Peru) is an homage to one of the most important of the Pre-Columbian Peruvian civilizations, which flourished between the first and eighth centuries. The show will be accompanied by an ambitious program of related activities.

  Visit the official MEG website.

Images and information courtesy of MEG

The 31st annual Marin Show: Art of The Americas

Open to the public on February 21–22, The Marin Show: Art of the Americas will celebrate its thirty-first year as the world’s leading show specializing in the art and culture of indigenous peoples from North, Central, and South America. Featuring more than 100 dealers, this event showcases a unique combination of antique Native American, Pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial, and contemporary American Indian art that attracts top dealers, passionate collectors, artists, and the culture-curious from across the world. 

For more information, visit the event's official website.

San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show 2015

More than eighty of the world’s top tribal art specialists will once again showcase art, jewelry, antiques, and accessories from the most remote areas on the planet at the twenty-ninth annual San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show, held February 6– 8, 2015, at Fort Mason Center’s Festival Pavilion. Ranging from galleries that have been doing business for generations to dealers who launched their careers collecting in the field, the artwork offered here is always stimulating and represents some of the best to be found in North America. The gala opening reception on the evening of February 5 benefits the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and is a not-to-be-missed event that allows first access to the wide-ranging treasures that the show presents.

For more information about the event, visit the official website.

Thema Sablon 4

Thema Sablon began its fourth installment in the Sablon arts district of Brussels yesterday and will continue through November 29. This exciting tribal art event comprises some twenty-five thematic exhibitions by a host of distinguished dealers, such as Didier Claes, Kevin Conru, Jo de Buck, Patrick Mestdagh, Serge Schoffel, and many more.

For more information, visit Thema's official Facebook page.

Mayas, révélation d'un temps sans fin

Set to open on October 7 at the Musée du Quai Branly is Mayas, révélation d'un temps sans fin (Maya: Revelation of an Endless Time), presenting objects from the majority of Maya territories and from the different periods that mark the extraordinary longevity of this civilisation, from the first archaeological remains (first millennium B.C.) until the present day. The Maya have left to posterity cities with spectacular architecture, sculpture of great aesthetic development, remarkable frescoes, refined ceramic vases… The exhibition presents nearly 400 works of art – including bas-relief and high relief sculptures, ceramic containers, lapidary art in jade, grave figurines and artefacts, jewellery, colonial documents, textiles, and more.  

More information at the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Musée du Quai Branly

Peruvian Gold: Ancient Treasures Unearthed

In its final weeks at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC is Peruvian Gold: Ancient Treasures Unearthed, which showcases a stunning array of gold and silver artifacts from Peru's pre-Inca heritage, including ceremonial and funerary masks, textiles, ceremonial ornaments, ceramics, and jewelry. The centerpiece of the exhibition is "El Tocado," the largest and most ornate pre-Columbian headdress ever discovered. This extraordinary example of gold regalia dates from the Middle Sican period (AD 900–1100) and came to light again in 1991. The exhibition draws its material from three Peruvian institutions: the Sican National Museum, the Larco Museum, and the Museum of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Forty Years in the Andes

40 ans dans les Andes. L’itinéraire oublié de Théodore Ber (Forty Years in the Andes: The Lost Itinerary of Théodore Ber), an installation now on view at the Musée Champollion de Figeac, highlights the life and exploits of one of the first Andean archaeologists. The important collection Ber assembled in the nineteenth century  –  now divided between the Musée du Quai Branly, the Musée de l'Homme, and the Musée d'Archéologie National de Saint-Germain-en-Laye  –  has been partially reuinted for this special exhibition.

View the exhibition's official website.

Théodore Ber at the site of Tiahuanaco, Bolivia 

Cephalomorphic vessel  -  Tiahuanaco, Bolivia

Aztecs in Melbourne

Through August 10, visitors to the Melbourne Museum can discover the ingenious agricultural technology, bustling commercial empire and pantheon of deities of Mexico's ancient Aztec civilization. Aztecs explores accounts of war, the arrival of Spanish explorers in Aztec territory, the encounter between Cortés and Moctezuma, and both the truth and fiction of Aztec human sacrifice. The installation was developed by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in partnership with the National Council for Culture and the Arts - National Institute of Anthropology and History - Mexico, the Australian Museum, and Museum Victoria.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Image courtesy of Museum Victoria

BRUNEAF XXIV

The 24th Brussels Non-European Art Fair (BRUNEAF) will be held this year on June 4–8. For those five days, the Sablon district of Brussels will become the epicenter of the tribal art world, with some fifty international tribal art dealers participating and several thematic exhibitions having been announced as part of the event. Joaquin Pecci will host Présence du Sacré, Invocations Ubangiennes (The Presence of the Sacred, Ubangi Invocations), David Serra will hold a thematic show called Formes et Matières (Forms and Materials), Alain Bovis’ show will be titled Têtes (Heads), and Maine Durieu will be putting on an exhibition called Autour du Blanc (About White). The quality of movement in the arts of Africa and Oceania will be the theme in Jo de Buck’s gallery, and Men in Africa is the title of the show that will be seen at Joëlle Fiess and Marc Félix’s Congo Gallery. Finally, Ángel Martín will feature a group of forty terracotta pieces from the Galma River region of Nigeria.

Visit the official BRUNEAF website.

Paris Tribal

The first annual edition of Paris Tribal will be held on April 3–6 in the Beaux-Arts/Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood of Paris. The event will bring together twenty-six galleries located in the uncontested capital of the tribal art world. The complete list of participants can be seen on the show’s website: www.paristribal.com. This will undoubtedly be an opportunity to discover any number of exceptional tribal works from Africa, America, Asia, Indonesia, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Visit the event's official website.

Image courtesy of Paris Tribal

Beyond Eldorado: Power and Gold in Ancient Colombia

From the Spanish Conquistadors to DreamWorks Studio’s animated heroes Tulio and Miguel, and by way of Voltaire’s Candide, many have dreamed of El Dorado. Whether a utopia or a myth, the legend of this lost city of gold rests on a fascinating reality that the British Museum’s most recent exhibition explores. Beyond El Dorado: Power and Gold in Ancient Colombia, on view through March 23, 2014, begins with the ritual that is the origin of the notion of El Dorado, which means “the golden one.” In this ritual, which was celebrated at Lake Guatavita, not far from what is now Bogota in Colombia, an individual who was contending for power was covered with gold dust, dove into the lake, and emerged as a chief of the Muisca people.

For more information on this exhibition, visit the official website.

Images and information courtesy of The British Museum

Tribal Art Fair Amsterdam 2013

From October 24–27, the eleventh annual Tribal Art Fair will take be held in the Amsterdam church known as “De Duif.” Twenty dealers from the Netherlands and abroad will exhibit objects from Oceania, Africa, Asia, and South America, including sculptures and jewelry but also textiles, masks, implements, and furniture. The fair will also include a number of lectures: Harry Beran will talk about traditional Massim art and the extent to which Massim woodcarvers develop a recognizable personal style, while Leif Pareli from the Norsk Folkemuseum will talk about the art and life of the Sami, who live in the Scandinavian arctic region.

For more information, visit the official Tribal Art Fair website.

Image courtesy of Tribal Art Fair Amsterdam