January 13, 2018 at Penn Museum – Andrew Hamilton, lecturer in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University: “Life and Death in an Andean River: The Making of Ancestors on a Lambayeque Vessel”
One of the most iconographically rich objects in all of Pre-Columbian Andean art is a repoussé-chased silver vessel from the Lambayeque culture. The beaker is covered in dense scenes that shed light on the complex worldviews of people living on the north coast of Peru during the 1300s. But, since the cup first entered the collection of the Denver Art Museum, it has likely been incorrectly assembled. How should the pieces actually fit together? And, how does this new configuration reshape our understanding of the cup’s narrative? This masterpiece of Andean silverwork is currently on view in the landmark exhibition Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and will be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from February 28 to May 28, 2018.
Andrew Hamilton is a scholar of the art and architecture of the ancient and colonial Americas, specializing in the Andes. His work is invested in analyzing objects, how they were made, used, and eventually disused, in order to understand why they were created and what cultural meanings they bore. He is interested in artifacts of all media, but especially ones made from biological materials that trace the intersection of art history and natural history, including textiles. He is a practicing artist and frequently illustrates his own publications. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.