I will be speaking for the first time as part of the Smithsonian Associates program, about Aztec Art, Architecture, and Ritual -- While the Aztec, or Mexica, people of sixteenth century Central Mexico had no specific word that corresponds precisely to the Western term “art,” they had very specific ideas about what made objects cualli—a word for good or right in the Nahuatl language. Ellen Hoobler, William B. Ziff, Jr. curator of art of the Americas at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum, surveys the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, site of modern Mexico City, during the reign of Moctezuma—an imperial city crisscrossed by canals and so beautiful that Spaniards who saw it wondered if it was a dream.
You can find out more and sign up here:
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/aztec-art-architecture
I am co-organizing the 2023 Mayer Center Symposium at the Denver Art Museum, in collaboration with their gifted curator, Dr. Victoria Lyall. The conference is entitled Collecting the "Other" Americas: Ancient Americas Collections in American Art museums. The term "Pre-Columbian art" once described the material culture produced in the Americas, mostly south of the U.S./Mexico border, prior to the arrival of Europeans. Museums across the United States now refer to these departments as "the Americas" or "the ancient Americas." Stewards of these collections in American art museums have begun to confront the changing meanings and import of what René d’Harnoncourt once described as the "Other Americas." This symposium, along with the associated publication, will capture the history of collecting and display of ancient American works in art museums, a history surprisingly poorly documented until now.
You can find out more and sign up here:
https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/calendar/2023-mayer-center-symposium
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.
What was the must-have beverage at royal festivities in the Maya area around 250-550 CE? it wasn't champagne, it was hot chocolate! Ellen Hoobler, Curator of Art of the Americas at the Walters, shares one of her favorite objects in the collection: a chocolate pot made by artists of the Maya culture, likely in Guatemala.
Cuál era la bebida más de moda en las festividades reales entre los mayas prehispánicos, entre 250-550 d.C.? No era el champán, sino el chocolate caliente! Ellen Hoobler, curadora de Arte de las Américas en el Walters comparte uno de sus objetos favoritos de la colección: una vasija para chocolate, creada por artistas de la cultura Maya, probablemente en el Guatemala actual.
A four-cornered woven hat made by expert weavers of the Wari (or Huari) culture of Peru packs a lot of identity into a small garment—if you know how to read its clues. Ellen Hoobler, William B. Ziff Jr., Associate Curator of Art of the Americas, and Joy Davis, Manager of Adult and Community Programs, converse about the hat’s identification as a pre-Columbian work and what the term pre-Columbian means. They also discuss how we interpret and construct knowledge about the cultures of the indigenous Americas.
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.
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