Video

For my second talk for Smithsonian Associates, I will discuss how, in the late 1930s and early 1940s the United States saw an explosion of exhibitions of art and artifacts from the pre-Columbian Americas. As World War II loomed on the horizon in Europe, America promoted cultural diplomacy with its hemispheric neighbors—part of the Pan-Americanism movement, which sought to create greater understanding and collaboration between nations.

One of the largest such exhibitions was 1940’s “Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art / Veinte Siglos de Arte Mexicano,” which took over the newly completed Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It was mounted during a moment of great tension between the two nations, as Mexico had just expropriated its oil resources, and many in the American business community would have preferred invasion—or at least sanctions—rather than offering a premier institution as a venue for Mexico to showcase its art. However, the show was the talk of the town, with Vogue reporting that “New York, in its upper social stratum, has definitely gone Mexican,” and portions of the exhibit traveled to other cities as well over the next few years.

You can find out more and sign up here:

https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/cultural-diplomacy

The filmmakers discuss The Absent Stone, a documentary film about Coatlinchan, Mexico, and the pueblo’s complex and ongoing relationship to the ancient stone statue of the water god that was removed from the town in 1964. 

Join filmmakers Sandra Rosental and Jesse Lerner in conversation with Ellen Hoobler, William B. Ziff, Jr., Associate Curator of the Art of the Americas, 1200 BCE–1500 CE, for a discussion about their film The Absent Stone.

***You can watch The Absent Stone through the Maryland Film Festival / Parkway Theater virtual viewing room here: https://watch.eventive.org/parkway/play/60f6f57c67bfa00086cf45fd

  People in cultures throughout history have gazed up at the night sky and seen their own imagined, culturally specific images in the glowing points of stars. Baltimore artist René Treviño explores how many features of our culture, even supposed natural phenomena, are framed in terms of European ideas and concepts. In a recent series of paintings, one of which is included in the Walters exhibition Translations and Transitions / Traducciones y Transiciones, Treviño challenges this Eurocentric view with a creative reimagining of the constellations, pointing out how the web of stars can be configured and reconfigured—as can our cultural canon. Treviño talks with Ellen Hoobler, William B. Ziff, Jr. Associate Curator of the Art of the Americas, about his work and recovering Indigenous traditions. 

  In the second of two conversations, Mary Miller, director of the Getty Research Institute, and authors Mark Nelson, William H. Sherman, and Ellen Hoobler will explore how the context of the collection shaped how it was assembled, displayed, and interpreted. 

 Matthew Affron, the Philip and Muriel Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will moderate a lively discussion with the authors as they share how they mined archival materials, including at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to uncover the unpublished history of the Arensberg collection on the West coast, and ultimately reconstruct how the works of art were displayed in their Hollywood home. Drawing from this new research, the discussion (the Arcadia Library Lecture) will also examine how this display reflected the collecting tastes and worldview of the Arensbergs.

In art museums, we are usually focused on the visual qualities of the works of art in our collection, yet many of the ceramics of the ancient Americas, particularly from Peru, were made to function not just as vessels or figurines, but also as whistles or other musical instruments.  The original use and sound of these vessels can be hard to discern, and many Andean vessels made sounds that were enhanced by filling the container with water and agitating it, a process too destructive to replicate in the museum. In this talk, curator Ellen Hoobler discusses recent research on objects in our collection over the past few years. Using a vessel of the Sicán culture of Peru (ca. 900-1100 CE), she explains how we have found non-destructive ways to play and record the sounds of these ceramic works.

A discussion of the uses of archaeological objects in cultural diplomacy between Mexico and the U.S. in the 1930s and '40s. Paper presented at Here, There and In Between: Transnational Encounters in Latin American Art: The IV International Symposium of Art History, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, August 2014.