Converging Cultures: Latin America 1520-1830

About the Tour

This audio tour through the Brooklyn Museum’s collections of Andean textiles, ceramics, furniture, and paintings from the pre-Hispanic and colonial periods focuses on the effects of the Spanish conquest on indigenous societies, with attention to patterns of cultural syncretism. Reflecting broad developments in Latin American scholarship, the tour approaches the cultural interactions of Andean colonial society not as a simple dichotomy between Indian and Spaniard, but rather as the mutual entanglements of the many ethnic groups and social ranks that clashed and connected after the Spanish invasion of 1531-32. The objects examined by the tour will help stimulate students to see that at the time of their meeting, both Spanish and indigenous societies were themselves cultural hybrids and their encounter generated yet another synthetic culture.

Annotated Bibliography of Printed Resources

Alvin Jr., Josephy America in 1492, The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus (NY: Knopf, 1992).

Bawden, Garth and Conrad, Geoffrey W. The Andean Heritage. Masterpieces of Peruvian Art from the Collections of the Peabody Museum Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press, 1982.

Boone, Elizabeth Hill and Tom Cummins, eds. Native Traditions in the Post-Conquest World. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998.

Burkholder, Mark A. and Johnson, Lyman L. Colonial Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Cobo, Bernabé. History of the Inca Empire. An Account of their Indians’ customs and their origin together with a treatise on Inca legends, history, and social institutions. Translated and Edited by Roland Hamilton. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1979.

Dean, Carolyn and Dana Leibsohn. ―Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America, Colonial Latin American Review 12:1 (2003): 5-35.

Dean, Carolyn and Dana Leibsohn. ―Copies Carts: Spanish Prints and Colonial Peruvian Paintings, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Mar., 1996): 98-110.

Dean, David. Museum Exhibition. Theory and Practice. (London: Routledge, 1994).

De la Vega, Garcilaso. The Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru Karen Spalding Editor. Hackett Publishing Company, 2006.

De Leon, Pedro de Cieza, Alexandra Parma Cook, and David Noble Cook. The Discovery and Conquest of Peru: Chronicles of the New World Encounter. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.

Diana, Fane Editor. Converging Cultures. Art & Identity in Spanish America. The Brooklyn Museum of Art in Association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1996.

Diana, Fane Editor. Ancient Andean and North American Indian Art. Brooklyn Museum of Art Archives Packet

Graubart, Karen B. With Our Labor and Sweat”: Indigenous Women and the Construction of Colonial Society (Peru 1550-1700). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Graubart, Karen B. Weaving and the Construction of a Gender Division of Labor in Early Colonial Peru, American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4 Autumn 2000): 537-561.

Guerrero, Guillermo. Arts in Education Program. Andean Music and Musical Instruments Study Guide Brooklyn Museum of Art Teachers Packet.

Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. Changing Values in the Art Museum: Rethinking Communication and Learning International Journal of Heritage Studies 6:1 (March 2000): 9-31.

Murra, John V.―Cloth and its Functions in the Inca State American Anthropologist, 64, 4 (1962).

Pearce, Susan M . Ed. Interpreting Objects and Collections London: Routledge, 1994.

Poma de Ayala, Felipe Guaman. El primer nueva crónica y buen gobierno. c. 1613. Eds., John Murra and Rolena Adorno. Mexico: Siglo, 1980.

Princeton University Art Museum Handbook of the Collections. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2007.

Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Making

Objects

Speak