Awards
2006 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award
Eleana Phipps, Johanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín, eds., The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830
Eleana Phipps, Johanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín, eds., The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830 (2004)
The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2004), edited by Eleana Phipps, Johanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín, represents the permanent record of an exhibition comprising 160 objects drawn from collections in Europe and South America, held last year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Bringing together works of art ranging from fifteenth-century Inca mantles and women’s dress pins to silver Eucharist vessels crafted in eighteenth-century Peru, the exhibition demonstrated the remarkable richness of Andean colonial art in media that were of great importance to Andean culture but have not often been featured in major museum presentations.
The catalogue, which extends and amplifies its parent exhibition, is a model of coordination and international scholarly cooperation, with contributions from seventeen scholars from North and South America and Europe. Clearly written and beautifully illustrated, with seven fascinating essays covering such topics as “Garments and Identity in the Colonial Andes,” “Religion and Society in Inca and Spanish Peru,” and “Indigenous Ideas about Wealth in Colonial Peru” and with extensive catalogue entries for each object, The Colonial Andes makes the three-hundred-year history of a rich and varied culture accessible to both scholars and the general public.
In addition, by taking up issues of adoption, adaptation, and seeming-to-adopt-while-subverting as wellas the development of a hybrid Catholicism, it suggests methods and approaches that will be of interest to art historians working in a wide variety of fields. Our congratulations to the editors, Eleana Phipps, Johanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín, to Thomas B. F. Cummins, Sabine MacCormack, and Frank Salomon, who together with the editors wrote the catalogue essays, to the eleven additional scholars who provided catalogue entries, and to the Metropolitan Museum and Yale University Press for this exemplary contribution to the literature of art history.
Jury: Alan Wallach, College of William and Mary, chair; Elizabeth Childs, Washington University in St. Louis; Beth Holman, Bard Graduate Center; Carol S. Ivory, Washington State University, Pullman; Forrest McGill, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
