Museum Anthropology

E S S AY

Subverting the Venue: A Critical Exhibition ofPre-Columbian Objects at Krannert Art MuseumFeatured Works XVI: The Social Context of Violence inAncient Peruvian Art. Krannert Art Museum, Universityof Illinois Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL. March 27–May23, 2004.

HELAINE SILVERMANUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ABSTRACT My temporary exhibition in Krannert Art Museum,The Social Context of Violence in Ancient Peruvian Art (March27–May 23, 2004), is transgressive and self-critical. While pre-senting a small number of objects in the university art museum’scollection that depict ancient violence (battles, human sacrifice,and trophy head taking), the exhibition simultaneously arguesthat the objects themselves are the result of violence, specificallyto the archaeological record through the act of looting. The exhi-bition further suggests that the looters are themselves the victimsof a failed national economic system that does not enable themto earn a living wage as farmers and of an exploitative interna-tional art market that similarly pays them little for objects thatbecome immensely valuable (financially and culturally) once outof the country. Museums, and especially university museums, maybe enabling venues for the interrogation of their own hegemonicpractices. [Keywords: museum anthropology, pre-Columbian art,looting, collecting]

“These works incorporate both their pre-history andtheir after-history—an after-history in virtue of whichtheir pre-history, too, can be seen to undergo constantchange.”

—Walter Benjamin, “Eduard Fuchs,Collector and Historian”

”Objects of the past have always been pulled into thepresent via the gaze that hit them.”

—Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories. MarkingTime in a Culture of Amnesia

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 106, Issue 4, pp. 732–738, ISSN 0002-7294, electronic ISSN 1548-1433. C© 2004 by the American AnthropologicalAssociation. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of CaliforniaPress’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

INTRODUCTION: UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS

There are a plethora of university art museums in the UnitedStates (Russell and Spencer 2000), from the prestigious FoggArt Museum at elite Harvard University to the Arrot ArtGallery at New Mexico Highlands University. It seems thatpossession of an art museum is a key signifier of culturalstatus (including status as a venue for ritualized normativecultural performance) and educational worth in the com-petitive world of higher education as well as being a vitaleducational resource for students and a university’s sur-rounding community. Yet in the vast critical literature aboutmuseums (not the thousands of descriptive university pub-lications about the contents of their own collections), littlehas been written about contemporary university art muse-ums (cf. Haxthausen 2003), notwithstanding that these mu-seums are potentially sites of great creativity—free as theyare from politicized economic control at the national leveland embedded within centers of higher education that bytheir very nature foment critical inquiry and active debate.

One such museum, Krannert Art Museum (KAM) is lo-cated on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, a premier research institution. KAM’s perma-nent collection places it among the top tier of university artmuseums nationwide. It also is the largest fine arts museumin the state of Illinois, south of Chicago. KAM’s collectionencompasses more than 8,000 objects of which, of course,only a small percentage are on display. KAM is particularlystrong in “Old Master” European art from the 15th to the19th centuries and American (U.S.) art. Several hundred ar-chaeological objects from Egypt, China, and Peru are alsopart of the collection.

The construction of KAM in 1961 was undertaken toestablish a permanent home for the University’s existingcollection of fine art and to permit further growth. TheKrannert Foundation of Indianapolis contributed substan-tial funds, resulting in the name of the museum. Designed

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by architect Ambrose Richardson, its style is reminiscent ofthe late work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. KAM is phys-ically linked to the School of Fine Arts by a multipurposeglass-enclosed gallery (used for student relaxation, studentart exhibitions, etc.). In 1988, a new wing, the KinkeadPavilion (named after its donor) was added, providing a sec-ond entrance and more gallery space and nearly doublingthe museum’s size to 48,000 square feet. The architecturalfirm Larry Booth and Associates created the Kinkead Pavil-ion. It incorporates six neo-Egyptian columns in an over-all postmodernist design that is discordant with the mainbuilding while resonating with much of the new construc-tion on campus. The KAM facility also includes a small cafeand gift shop, a fine auditorium heavily used by several de-partments because of its excellent projection equipment, asmall library, a print study room, and the Giertz EducationCenter, which lends art resources and is intensively used bygrade school educators.1

The five permanent galleries on the first floor (African[sub-Saharan]; Asian; 20th Century; Bow [16th–19th cen-tury European and American]; and Trees [Dutch, Flemish,Italian, English, French]) and four permanent galleries inthe lower level (Ancient Mediterranean,2 Pre-ColumbianPeru, Medieval, and Decorative Arts) provide the local com-munity with a rich and diverse exposure to material cul-ture of Western and non-Western cultures. As part of itspublic mission, KAM is especially dedicated to communityoutreach, providing special events, organized tours, pub-lic lectures, teacher workshops, and website access to thepermanent collection. The museum attracts over 132,000visitors annually, more than the total population of thecities of Champaign and Urbana. KAM serves a wide andvaried public—including the faculty, staff, and studentsof the University of Illinois, the Urbana–Champaign com-munities, and the people of east-central Illinois. Partner-ships and collaborations with schools, community groups,campus units, and individuals allow the KAM staff andprograms to serve, engage, and involve this wide audi-ence. In addition to museum visits, KAM has developeda strong program of traveling exhibitions with accom-panying catalogues. The Museum is used frequently forpublic lectures, concerts, dance performances, and filmscreenings. Admission is free to the museum and allevents.

In recent years, KAM has enthusiastically encouragedinnovative temporary exhibitions while maintaining a tra-ditional script for its permanent exhibitions. The 12 to15 changing exhibitions each year (an astonishingly highnumber) encompass two kinds of shows. The first is elabo-rate, either bringing works of art from other museums andcollections (both national and international) or originat-ing with the help of university scholars and then travel-ing to other venues (such as was the case with the “Be-yond East and West: Seven Transnational Artists” exhibit;see O’Brien and Prochaska 2004). These exhibitions aretypically avant-garde or highly political in intent, for in-stance, the current “Social Studies,” in which eight artists

address Brown vs. Board of Education in commemorationof the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision.These major traveling exhibitions are held in the large eastgallery.

On a much smaller scale are the changing “FeaturedWorks” exhibitions, a concept inaugurated three years agoby then-director Josef Helfenstein. Helfenstein’s rationalefor “Featured Works” was to give faculty in all relevant de-partments the opportunity to thematically display objectsheld in KAM’s storage rooms because at KAM, arguably asin all other museums, the great modernist project of col-lections accumulation is over. Concomitantly, open-endedexhibitions like “Featured Works” encourage multiple in-terpretations within the overall framework provided by theobjects, thereby challenging or replacing a museum’s tra-ditional disciplinary program (see, e.g., Hooper-Greenhill1992:167–190).

A COUNTER-EXHIBITION: “FEATURED WORKS XVI:THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF VIOLENCE IN ANCIENTPERUVIAN ART”

In Fall 2003, I was asked by KAM’s curator, Michael W.Conner, to guest curate an exhibition for the FeaturedWorks Gallery, the 16th such temporary exhibition atKAM.3 Normally, faculty initiate featured works exhibi-tions. In this case, I was assigned the topic of “violence” tocoincide with the theme chosen by the Illinois Program forResearch in the Humanities (IPRH) for its yearlong fellowsseminar and major conference. I welcomed the opportunityto create a small exhibition drawn from the pre-Columbiancollection as a chance to interrogate museum practice insitu. I realized that the topic offered an extraordinary op-portunity to initiate discussion on three levels.

First, there is the archaeology itself. Ancient Peruvianpottery and textiles often depict scenes of warfare amonghuman as well as supernatural beings; human warriors andtheir vanquished victims; human trophy heads carried byhumans and supernaturals; battles and scenes of sacrifice;and triumphal processions. For the exhibition, I chose fiveviolence-themed objects in the permanent collection. Briefinterpretations of their iconography were presented on la-bels in the display cases, accompanied by supplementaryimages that provided more cultural and contextual infor-mation. This aspect of the exhibition speaks to the socialcontext of violence in the societies that generated this ma-terial culture and argues that these objects and the real-life events they depict must be understood according totheir own cultural norms, not ours. (I will not go intofurther detail about the archaeology of violence in thisessay.)

Second—and radically for a museum venue—the ex-hibition acknowledges that violence has been done to thePeruvian archaeological record by the unscientific removalof these objects from their original contexts. This aspect ofthe exhibition addresses the problem of looting that, ul-timately, is caused by poverty—a form of social violence

734 American Anthropologist • Vol. 106, No. 4 • December 2004

that prompts peasant farmers to seek extra income by graverobbing for an insatiable antiquities market. Seven of theexhibition labels of supplementary texts specifically referto the unscientific circumstances of the objects’ excavationand subsequent illicit departure from Peru (see below).

Third, the exhibition challenges us to think beyond aes-thetically accomplished pre-Columbian material culture assomething to be hung on a wall or displayed in fine cases.The objects exhibited in The Social Context of Violence in An-cient Peruvian Art (March 27–May 23, 2004) obviously hadgreatly appreciated aesthetic value at the time of their cre-ation as elite material culture and were deployed in a va-riety of social performances and ceremonies in their ownsocieties. Today, we are looking at ideology-laden materialswhose meaning to their Peruvian contemporaries was fardifferent from our literal readings of them as “art.” The ex-hibition is “contaminated by art history’s complicity withthe museum as a form of display” (Bann 1998:237) at thesame time that it criticizes the display of pre-Columbianmaterial culture as “art” in art museums and makes sub-tle reference to their other great exhibitionary venue innatural history and cultural history or anthropology mu-seums (e.g., Ames 1992; Bennett 1995:180–201; Chapman1985; Errington 1998:22–33; Hinsley 1985; Jacknis 1985;Yanni 1999; and see discussion in Price 1989:122). Indeed,the University of Illinois recently inaugurated a second mu-seum, Spurlock Museum (“a museum of world history andculture,” named after its donor), which also displays pre-Columbian artifacts. The difference between these two mu-seums is striking, including their location (Spurlock is onthe eastern edge of the Urbana side of campus and KAM ison the western edge of the Champaign side).

ORGANIZATION OF THE EXHIBITION

In discussing museums, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill intro-duced the term secondary spatialisation, by which she means“space and knowledge articulate in the museum in a specificmanner. The spatial arrangements of the exhibition divide,control, and give meaning to the material things” (1990). Iwas well aware of the ideological (art historical philosophy)and physical (size of the gallery) factors constraining myexhibition.

The venue for KAM’s “Featured Works” is a small gallery(originally a light court with fountain) between the en-try hall and the Twentieth Century Gallery. It measures 17feet × 40 feet. Located opposite the Palette Cafe, it receivessteady through traffic.

I chose seven pieces and indicated where I wanted themto go in the gallery so that the visitor would “consume” theknowledge I organized in a particular way yet be enabledto generate his or her own interpretations. I wrote the ob-ject labels and wall texts and provided supplementary wallmaterial. In these activities, there was negotiation with theKAM staff over how many objects could be shown (a discus-sion informed both by the size of the gallery and the staff’ssense of display aesthetics) and how much text would be

permitted. As an anthropological archaeologist, I of coursewanted more objects and much more text than was finallypermitted to appear in the gallery. Yet I am not unhappywith the outcome: I was permitted to cogently present myposition and the exhibition was readily visible as well asphysically and conceptually balanced.

Of course, I was not qualified to deal with the installa-tion of the exhibition. I had no idea what colors the wallsshould be (nor was I about to paint them myself), was tech-nically unable to prepare the labels and photographs frommy own source material, and could not manage the light-ing. KAM’s talented exhibition designer, Eric Lemme, ac-complished these tasks. He was so good that my uncon-ventional script is undermined by its dramatic visual dis-play. The five ceramic vessels in the exhibition sat atoppedestals that were widely spaced in the gallery. This “iso-lation” (see Price 1989:84) was enhanced by spotlights thatilluminated the pots in the otherwise dim room, thereby“promoting the fetishism of the auratic object” (Walsh1997:170). This exhibitionary style is characteristic of artshows and further serves to construct “mysterious civiliza-tions” for the consuming public through its hyperdecon-textualization of the ancient objects (see Figure 1). The twopre-Columbian textiles mounted on the wall were simi-larly spotlighted. But this institution-promoting presenta-tion of the artifacts as art (and universally accessible; see,e.g., Errington 1998:102–117; Price 1989:23–36) was itselfsubverted and complicated by various of the exhibition’swall texts and wall illustrations.

Thus, the label for one of the textiles states:

Paracas Necropolis Archaeology. The archaeological cul-ture called Paracas Necropolis is named after the site ofdiscovery: a great necropolis on the Paracas Peninsula.Investigations at this site were conducted by a Peruvianteam between 1925–1930. More than 400 mummy bun-dles were recovered, many of which contained multiple

FIGURE 1. Looking into the Featured Works Gallery at the tempo-rary exhibition, The Social Context of Violence in Ancient PeruvianArt. Note the dramatic lighting, sparse arrangement of pedastaledobjects, and supplementary textual and graphic material on walls.

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FIGURE 2. Photographs of huaqueros in the Ingenio and Grande valleys, south coast of Peru. (Left image) The author (center, with kerchiefand notebook) came upon these looters by chance while conducting an archaeological survey project. The looters use the diagnostic tool oftheir trade, a metal rod (sonda) with which they probe for hollow cavities (i.e., tombs) in the ground. It is this tool that causes the ubiquitoussmall hole seen in so many complete ceramic vessels on display in museums. (Right image) Two looters hold some of their “loot” from aday’s work.

layers of exquisite textiles. Unfortunately, politics andeconomics intervened in the Peruvian project such thatthe scientific excavations were not permitted to continueand then there was no money to protect the site which,by that time, was world famous. It is quite likely thatthe textile from which the Krannert Art Museum frag-ment comes was collected/looted shortly after 1930 whenthe Paracas Necropolis site was massively vandalized. TheKrannert Art Museum fragment was cut up for sale, pos-sibly to maximize profit or to hide the damage causedby ripping apart the mummy bundle in the process of itsexcavation. A complete Paracas Necropolis textile mightmeasure approximately 6 × 4 feet. [The Social Context ofViolence in Ancient Peruvian Art 2004]4

And the label for a set of framed textiles reads:

In this single frame are two textile fragments cut fromtheir respective mummy bundles, possibly by looters (seephotograph on wall). The two pieces were produced insocieties separated by many centuries and at least a hun-dred miles. Yet we can easily see why the two textileswere mounted within the same frame. They share cer-tain similarities of color and geometric line. Indeed, theyare members of the same cultural tradition as it evolvedand diversified over time. Viewed as “art,” they have nowbeen totally dislocated from their original historical andcultural context. [The Social Context of Violence in AncientPeruvian Art 2004]5

And the exhibition’s large ceramic drum is explained by onelabel that gives its archaeological context (drums were usedin fertility rituals in ceremonial centers of the particularancient culture) and a second label that provides the object’ssociological history. The latter states:

The recent history of this ceramic drum has been re-counted in vivid detail in Birds On A Drum, published by

Krannert Art Museum (1996). Careful technical study ledUniversity of Illinois scholars to believe that looters brokethis beautiful musical instrument in the process of extri-cating it from its tomb quite some decades ago. Eitherthe looters or the antiquities traffiker/dealer reassembledthe broken vessel resulting in substantial areas of recon-struction. Once reconstructed, the entire original Nascasurface was overpainted with the same design. In otherwords, this is an authentic Nasca drum that had beenfaked in order to repair its damage and facilitate its sale![The Social Context of Violence in Ancient Peruvian Art 2004]

The exhibition ends with side-by-side wall plaques present-ing images of Peruvian looters and the lyrics of a famousmarinera (a particular kind of coastal dance with musicallyrics) called “El Huaquero.” The text explains that hua-quero comes from the Quechua word for “ceramic pot” andrefers to the grave robber who loots tombs for their beauti-ful pottery (see Figure 2). The panel directs the visitor tolisten to the melody by going to the following website:http:// www.musicaperuana.com/francais/marineras.htm.As a kind of conscience hovering over the exhibition, I hadwanted a border running around the gallery, along the topof the walls that would repeat the text of the internationalconventions legitimating and criticizing the collection. Butin this time of extreme budgetary constraint at the Univer-sity, the vinyl proved too costly. So we put the conventionson a poster board at the entrance to the exhibition, wherevisitors also would see them as they exited the gallery.6

As the exhibition neared its opening, the museum staffbecame concerned that the legality of the collection mightbe questioned by so much attention to the conventions andthe acts of looting that resulted in the collection. Thus, Iwas encouraged to add a kind of disclaimer to the text of

736 American Anthropologist • Vol. 106, No. 4 • December 2004

the introductory panel that explains the tripartite nature ofthe exhibit. That paragraph reads:

There is an important counterpoint to this exhibit.Krannert Art Museum obtained its antiquities legally, thatis to say, at a time prior to enactment of internationalconventions prohibiting export. As a university museum,Krannert Art Museum collects and exhibits its ancientmaterials in order to share what is known about the An-dean past with the entire learning community. How wellthe Museum succeeds is very much dependent upon theintegrity of the exhibitions within which these objects arecontextualized. [The Social Context of Violence in AncientPeruvian Art 2004]

I can live with my statement. To think otherwise, I wouldhave to be an advocate for return of all pre-Columbian ma-terial in all extranational museums. I can see no point tosuch wholesale repatriation as the objects are already out ofcontext. Moreover, in the case of KAM’s collection, nothingis so spectacular that Peru is requesting return.7 Rather, self-critical exhibitions such as The Social Context of Violence inAncient Peruvian Art can serve to educate the public aboutthe pre-Columbian past and Peruvian present, thereby jus-tifying the continued existence of the Museum’s collection.

THE PRE-COLUMBIAN PAST IN THE PERUVIAN ANDKAM PRESENT

The 1960s were a time of growing academic and exhibi-tionary interest in pre-Columbian art, and many U.S. mu-seums had already acquired major pre-Columbian collec-tions and exhibitions. In 1967, KAM was able to acquire alarge collection of ancient Peruvian pottery, textiles, wood,feathers, and precious metals through a combination of do-nation and purchase from Fred and Florence Olsen.8 Mostof KAM’s 600 objects of pre-Columbian manufacture comefrom this acquisition.

All of KAM’s pre-Columbian materials are legally heldin terms of international standards because they were ac-quired prior to enactment of the 1970 UNESCO Conven-tion on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Il-licit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of CulturalProperty and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolenor Illegally Exported Cultural Objects. KAM, like all muse-ums accredited by the American Association of Museums(AAM), subscribes to the AAM Code of Ethics as well as theInternational Council of Museums (ICOM) Code of Ethics.Nevertheless, the possession and exhibition of ancient ma-terials outside their countries of origin by any museum isproblematic. The Social Context of Violence in Ancient Peru-vian Art addresses some of these concerns.

One major issue is proper contextualization of the ma-terial. Although education of the public does not requiretransport or reconstruction of the original context in itsentirety as Antoine-Chrysotome Quatremere de Quincy,“the first full-fledged critic of art museums,” demanded(Sherman 1994:127), Quatremere’s concern with contextstill haunts art museums as well as other museums display-ing archaeological and ethnographic material. All too often,

the specific context of original production and use is miss-ing, as is a materialized or textualized recognition of thegenealogy, history, and contemporary processes by whichthese objects entered museums. My exhibit attempted toredress Quatremere’s contention by illustrating the ancientcultural practices and physical settings within which theobjects were deployed and by discussing how the objectscame to be part of the museum collection.9

Another important (many would say paramount) issueis the traffic in antiquities that has led to the formationof great (and minor) collections of pre-Columbian artifactsin foreign museums (as well as in private hands). At thesource of that traffic in Peru is the huaquero. Present-dayPeru is characterized by significant poverty, even on thecoast where farmers do not live in traditional peasant com-munities as described in the classic Andean ethnographicliterature (see, e.g., Brush 1977; Isbell 1985). The bene-fits of the 1968–75 Agrarian Reform have collapsed overthe past 30 years with the imposition of neoliberal andglobalization-driven national economic strategies. Farm-steads and small rural communities still lack running waterand have limited electrical power. Schools are modest in theextreme. Commercial activity serves basic necessities of thecommunity only. Doctors and medicine are located somedistance away and represent a major out-of-pocket expensewhen needed. And so on.

On the south coast where I conducted 15 years of con-tinuous archaeological fieldwork (and probably in otherareas), none of the huaqueros whom I interviewed wereeconomically comfortable (see, e.g., Silverman 1993:100–105; for a unique north-coast perspective, see Kirkpatrick1992:15–21). Neither are these poorly educated and untrav-eled men aware of the prices commanded by their “trea-sures” once purveyed by the intermediary to the antiq-uities dealers and collectors in major Peruvian cities (seeKirkpatrick 1992:49, 52, 75), let alone when smuggled outof the country (see, e.g., Kirkpatrick 1992:75–78, 99–103,121–125, 147, 165–170). For instance, in February 1987 twochains of gold and shell beads looted from the first spectac-ular burial at Sipan brought the huaqueros a mere US$30(Kirkpatrick 1992:125).

Two photographs of looters (see Figure 2) and the twocut-up textiles framed together are on display next to theHuaquero Song. Those photographs are the final image ofthe exhibition. The Zen garden forces the visitor to eitherexit the gallery navigating around it or prompts the visitorto return to the beginning of the exhibition space. By show-ing the looters at work and in their daily personae, I hopedto make visitors think about the social conditions of thesemen.

CONCLUSIONS

Aesthetic appreciation of pre-Columbian material culturebegan soon after the European devastation of the societiesin which it was produced (Kubler 1991) and has continuedunabated to the present day. Many museums in the United

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States own and display the material culture of other nations’pasts. A significant body of critical literature has interro-gated the act of collecting as an individual, public, and na-tional or colonial enterprise (see, e.g., Clifford 1988a, 1988b;Coombes 1994; Elsner and Cardinal 1994; Findlen 1994;Hoffmann 1994).

Although many fine arts museums have outstandingpre-Columbian collections (The Art Institute of Chicagoand Metropolitan Museum of Art come readily to mind),10

archaeologists may feel professionally out of place inthese institutions because of these museums’ overwhelm-ing preference for aestheticized display of archaeologi-cal (and ethnographic) objects according to the Westerncanon and category of decorative art. James Clifford (1988a)has written insightfully about the controversial 1984–85MOMA exhibition, “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affin-ity of the Tribal and the Modern. Comparing the Museumof Modern Art to the American Museum of Natural His-tory, he optimistically suggests that within their paradig-matic polarity “interpenetration of discourses becomes pos-sible. Science can be aestheticized, art made anthropo-logical” (Clifford 1988a:203). The Social Context of Vio-lence in Ancient Peruvian Art (2004) was an attempt at thisinterpenetration that simultaneously seeks to challengethe “aesthetic-anthropological object systems of the West”(Clifford 1988a:209) and to make visible the social, eco-nomic, and political context of collecting and exhibiting. Atthe university level, fine arts museums may offer the bestopportunity to open up the space of display and criticaldiscussion through their efficient sponsorship of counter-exhibits, such as The Social Context of Violence in Ancient Pe-ruvian Art, that destabilize the very authority enabling theexhibitions in the first place.

NOTES

Acknowledgments. I wish to express my most sincere thanks toMichael W. Conner, who was so supportive of this unusual exhi-bition and always patient with me throughout the process. I amalso grateful to him for providing the background informationon KAM and the Olsen Collection. I appreciatively acknowledgeMatti Bunzl, Director of IPRH, for his institutional support of theIPRH reading group, “Museums Writ Large,” codirected by MichaelW. Conner and myself, which provided the larger context for mythinking about The Social Context of Violence in Ancient Peruvian Art.

1. The Fred and Donna Giertz Education Center is one of the mostexceptional and wide-reaching resources at KAM. Its circulatingfree-loan collection of over 3,200 art and cultural materials is avail-able for use by leaders of community organizations, parents, andeducators throughout the state in public and private schools. Theeducation center collection includes reproductions of art objects,poster prints, video recordings, slide sets, hands-on kits, books, andcurriculum resource guides. More than 65,000 K–12 students havebeen served by resources provided on free-loan from the Giertz Ed-ucation Center. Schools and teachers in a six-county region receivedetailed information about museum exhibitions and programs forchildren and families.

2. Ancient Mediterranean here indicates Ancient Egypt and AncientGreece; Ancient Egypt is scheduled to be transferred next year toAfrica upstairs.

3. My suggestion for the exhibition’s title used the words materialculture, rather than art. My suggestion was rejected by the museumstaff.

4. KAM insisted on the U.S. measurement system instead of metric.

5. Some of the text of the labels, such as “(see photograph onwall),” refer the viewer to other texts or objects in the exhibition.

6. The cultural patrimony laws referenced on the introductoryplaque to the exhibition were the following: (1) UNESCO, 1970.Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the IllicitImport, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property; (2)UNITED STATES, 1983. Convention on Cultural Property Imple-mentation Act; (3) PERU, 1993. Political Constitution of the Re-public of Peru, Chapter 2, Article 21; and (4) PERU, Law No. 24047.General Law of Protection of the Cultural Patrimony of the Nation.

7. This is an entirely different situation from the international dis-pute over Yale University’s possession of the Inca materials exca-vated by Hiram Bingham at Machu Picchu. In that case, it appearsthat Bingham did not fulfill his agreement with the Peruvian gov-ernment and that the materials should have been returned manydecades ago. Also, those collections have known provenience—Machu Picchu—and the site is Peru’s premier tourist attraction andvirtual emblem of the nation.

8. Fred Olsen was born in England in 1891. He was educated atthe University of Toronto, was a research chemist, and retired fromOlin Industries with many patents to his name. Olsen assembledthe collection now at KAM over the course of a ten-year periodfollowing his retirement. He is said to have collected primarily foraesthetic reasons because of his keen interest in abstract design innon-Western art (Sawyer 1975:iii). His collection was first exhib-ited in its entirety in 1965 at the University of Illinois. In 1967 heoffered to gift a large share of this collection. A grassroots fundrais-ing campaign by community volunteers raised enough money topurchase the remainder. A National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)grant enabled the university to retain Alan R. Sawyer, himself a col-lector as well as recognized scholar of pre-Columbian art, to classifythe artwork and to write the text for a catalog. An NEA grant alsopaid for Clarissa Palmai, a conservator at the Textile Museum inWashington, D.C., to clean and remount the textiles. Photographswere taken of the most significant pieces by Wilbur Zehr, and linedrawings were made by Raymond Perlman that documented par-ticular iconographic details. In 1975, Sawyer’s catalog of the entirecollection, Ancient Andean Arts in the Collections of the Krannert ArtMuseum, was produced by KAM with funding from a Ford Founda-tion grant.

9. I tried to achieve greater context for one aspect of the exhibit inparticular. One of the supplementary wall displays is a photographof a cache of 48 trophy heads I excavated in the Palpa Valley withmy colleagues David M. Browne and Ruben Garcıa Soto (see Browneet al. 1993). I wanted to blow up that photograph to 40 inches ×60 inches and to lay it on the sand of the permanent Zen gardenat the entrance to the Featured Works Gallery. By arranging thesix rocks of that fixture around the photograph I thought I couldconvey something of the actual archaeological context. The KAMstaff rejected my suggestion.

10. The Metropolitan Museum of Art encompasses the collectionsof the former Museum of Primitive Art.

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