Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico. ([By] Elizabeth Carmichael.).
Title | Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico. ([By] Elizabeth Carmichael.). PDF eBook |
Author | British Museum. Department of Ethnography |
Publisher | |
Pages | 40 |
Release | 1970 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico
Title | Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico PDF eBook |
Author | Elizabeth Carmichael |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 1978-12-01 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9780374847661 |
Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico
Title | Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico PDF eBook |
Author | Colin McEwan |
Publisher | Duke University Press |
Pages | 104 |
Release | 2006 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 9780822339243 |
The nine turquoise mosaics from Mexico are some the most striking pieces in the collections of the British Museum. Among the few surviving such artifacts, these exquisite objects include two masks, a shield, a knife, a helmet, a double-headed serpent, a mosaic on a human skull, a jaguar, and an animal head. They all originate from the Mixtec and Aztec civilizations first encountered by Europeans during the Spanish conquest in the early sixteenth century. The mosaics have long excited admiration for their masterful blend of technical skill and artistry and fascination regarding their association with ritual and ceremony. Only recently though, have scientific investigations undertaken by the British Museum dramatically advanced knowledge of the mosaics by characterizing, for the first time, the variety of natural materials that were used to create them. Illustrated with more than 160 color images, this book describes the recent scientific findings about the mosaics in detail, revealing them to be rich repositories of information about ancient Mexico. The materials used to construct the mosaics demonstrate their makers' deep knowledge of the natural world and its resources. The effort that would have been involved in procuring the materials testifies to the mosaics' value and significance in a society imbued with myths and religious beliefs. The British Museum's analyses have provided evidence of the way that the materials were prepared and assembled, the tools used, and the choices that were made by artisans. In addition, by drawing on historical accounts including early codices, as well as recent archaeological discoveries, specialists have learned more about the place of the mosaics in ancient Mexican culture. Filled with information about the religion, art, and natural and cultural history as well as the extraordinary ability of modern science to enable detailed insight into past eras, Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico offers an overview of the production, utilization, and eventual fate of these beautiful and mysterious objects.
Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico
Title | Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico PDF eBook |
Author | Elizabeth Carmichael |
Publisher | |
Pages | 48 |
Release | 1970 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN |
Collecting Mesoamerican Art before 1940
Title | Collecting Mesoamerican Art before 1940 PDF eBook |
Author | Andrew D. Turner |
Publisher | Getty Publications |
Pages | 354 |
Release | 2024-02-13 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 1606068733 |
The untold chronicles of the looting and collecting of ancient Mesoamerican objects. This book traces the fascinating history of how and why ancient Mesoamerican objects have been collected. It begins with the pre-Hispanic antiquities that first entered European collections in the sixteenth century as gifts or seizures, continues through the rise of systematic collecting in Europe and the Americas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and ends in 1940—the start of Europe’s art market collapse at the outbreak of World War II and the coinciding genesis of the large-scale art market for pre-Hispanic antiquities in the United States. Drawing upon archival resources and international museum collections, the contributors analyze the ways shifting patterns of collecting and taste—including how pre-Hispanic objects changed from being viewed as anthropological and scientific curiosities to collectible artworks—have shaped modern academic disciplines as well as public, private, institutional, and nationalistic attitudes toward Mesoamerican art. As many nations across the world demand the return of their cultural patrimony and ancestral heritage, it is essential to examine the historical processes, events, and actors that initially removed so many objects from their countries of origin.
Creating Authenticity
Title | Creating Authenticity PDF eBook |
Author | Alexander Geurds |
Publisher | Sidestone Press |
Pages | 182 |
Release | 2013-11-27 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 9088902054 |
‘Authenticity’ and authentication is at the heart of museums’ concerns in displays, objects, and interaction with visitors. These notions have formed a central element in early thought on culture and collecting. Nineteenth century-explorers, commissioned museum collectors and pioneering ethnographers attempted to lay bare the essences of cultures through collecting and studying objects from distant communities. Comparably, historical archaeology departed from the idea that cultures were discrete bounded entities, subject to divergence but precisely therefore also to be traced back and linked to, a more complete original form in de (even) deeper past. Much of what we work with today in ethnographic museum collections testifies to that conviction. Post-structural thinking brought about a far-reaching deconstruction of the authentic. It came to be recognized that both far-away communities and the deep past can only be discussed when seen as desires, constructions and inventions. Notwithstanding this undressing of the ways in which people portray their cultural surroundings and past, claims of authenticity and quests for authentication remain omnipresent. This book explores the authentic in contemporary ethnographic museums, as it persists in dialogues with stakeholders, and how museums portray themselves. How do we interact with questions of authenticity and authentication when we curate, study artefacts, collect, repatriate, and make (re)presentations? The contributing authors illustrate the divergent nature in which the authentic is brought into play, deconstructed and operationalized. Authenticity, the book argues, is an expression of a desire that is equally troubled as it is resilient.
Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico
Title | Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico PDF eBook |
Author | Trustees of the British Museum London |
Publisher | |
Pages | 40 |
Release | 1970 |
Genre | |
ISBN |