Director’s Foreword

Generally, museums offer a public platform for the presentation and exploration of cultural narratives, memories, and aesthetics. Increasingly, as these institutions grapple with their complicated colonial pasts, curators have begun investigating their collections’ origins to better understand how they were formed, who contributed to their formation, and how the objects were used to represent cultures, countries, and identities. “Pre-Columbian” art once described the material culture produced in the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans. Now, museums across the US typically use art “of the Americas” or “of the ancient Americas” to describe these objects produced south of the US-Mexico border. The shift in terminology reflects the continuing effort to confront the changing meanings and import of what collector Nelson Rockefeller once described as the “other Americas.”¹

This volume captures the history of collecting and the display of ancient American works in art museums across the United States. Beginning in the early to mid-twentieth century, the frame of the art museum shifted the interest of these objects from their ethnographic and anthropological context to their status as works of art. Now, such art is frequently displayed in conjunction with modern and contemporary Latin American art—an acknowledgment of the Latine heritage woven into the fabric of many of the cities in which the museums are located—and a testament to the enduring relevance of ancient cultures in contemporary life.

This history lays bare the sometimes questionable means by which collectors and museums built their collections of ancient American art. In September 2022, the Denver Art Museum created a new Department of Provenance Research to expand its commitment to ethical collecting practices. Provenance research has always been an integral part of the museum’s curatorial purview, and we are one of only a few US museums with a department dedicated to guiding us in this ongoing work. During 2023, the department and curatorial staff increased accessibility of the museum’s collections by prioritizing and posting more artwork and provenance histories online. The museum’s provenance research web page was created to provide a forum to regularly educate and update the community on the progress of our work and document our past and current repatriations to countries of origin. The following papers are from the twenty-first symposium of the Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for Ancient and Latin American Art. The Mayers played a crucial role as benefactors to and supporters of the ancient Americas collection. Their generosity went beyond donating objects and included endowing the department and its activities to ensure the continued vibrancy of the field. Established in 2001, the center’s purpose is to increase awareness and promote scholarship about Latin America, including through exhibitions, conservation, fellowships, and a rigorous schedule of symposia.

I applaud Victoria Isabel Lyall, Frederick and Jan Mayer Curator for Arts of the Ancient Americas, and Ellen Hoobler, William B. Ziff, Jr., Curator of Art of the Americas at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, for organizing the 2023 symposium and for their dedication to advancing knowledge in this field. I also recognize Jan Mayer, who, with her late husband, longtime museum trustee Frederick Mayer, has provided unwavering support to the department since 1968. On behalf of the staff at the museum, I offer my deepest gratitude.

1. In a letter dated September 29, 1944, to René d’Harnoncourt, who was the vice president in charge of foreign activities at the Museum of Modern Art, Nelson A. Rockefeller referred to Latin America as the “other Americas.” The letter is part of a longer correspondence that makes clear the intended reason for d’Harnoncourt’s travels was to assess and report back the progress of communism in the “other Americas.” Record group: III 4 L, Box 135, Folder 1325, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY. ↩︎