Arts & Humanities

Art or Artifact? Anthropology Museum New Home of Pre-Columbian Objects

Are these pieces artwork or objects for anthropological research? The new exhibit of pre-Columbian ceramics and other artifacts at the Museum of Anthropology lets visitors decide.

Old Main may not have been their intended destination, but dozens of ancient ceramics and other artifacts are now enjoying life in their new home.

That journey’s end is Utah State University’s Museum of Anthropology. And more than 130 pieces from ancient Peru and its neighbors are moving out of storage and into the light.

Yes, even the toaster-high pottery figurine dangling a severed head from one hand and holding a saber in the other.

Molly Cannon loves them all.

“Aren’t they just incredible?” asks the Museum of Anthropology curator. “There are amazing stories in them.”

In a transaction that’s fairly rare among museums, USU’s Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art has gifted the collection to the anthropology museum. And the Museum of Anthropology, in its eagerness, has put many of the artifacts on display to let visitors gawk at them, even as anthropology students begin a years-long probe into their origins.

And, from a new teaching space within the museum itself, visitors can watch the students research, catalog and tackle pigment and residue tests. A more formal opening reception for the exhibit is planned for some time in the future.

The specific origins of the pieces are a mystery. Nearly all are ceramics are pre-Columbian, which Cannon defines as the period before Spanish conquistadors reached South America. Some were crafted within the Inca empire. Others are from obscure cultures that from 300 B.C. to 1200 A.D. ranged the long western coast of what is now Peru.

There are also ancient textiles — some more than centuries old, expertly woven and still exhibiting intense, vibrant hues.

The collection of artifacts is itself a collection of gifts. Some were donated to USU as an institution and some to the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, all between 1984 and 2001.

By their very nature, museums retain such gifted items “in perpetuity,” said Rebecca Dunham, NEHMA’s curator of collections and exhibitions. “We’re supposed to keep that object forever and preserve it,” she said.

That’s why the transition between the two museums is a “unique situation,” she said. “It is a rare thing that a museum will give up an object that was in its collection.”

What makes this gift between museums work, she adds, is that NEHMA was probably not the best home for the artifacts.

NEHMA is the legacy of Nora Eccles Harrison, an artist, patron of the arts and voracious collector. Her passion was ceramics, said Dunham, and her collection of more than 400 ceramic pieces was the basis of the museum when it opened in 1982. Today, NEHMA’s ceramics collection has earned national and international repute, said Dunham.

Over the years, however, the museum’s mission has clarified. It specializes in Western American art from the 20th and 21st centuries, said Dunham.

As a result, the pre-Columbian artifacts were consigned to storage — darkness and obscurity — until NEHMA’s Dunham reached out to the Museum of Anthropology’s Cannon.

The anthropology museum, said Dunham, “was really the best choice in terms of their knowledge, their skill set, their background and their interest in this material.”

The upshot is that not only will the artifacts be seen and admired, they’ll provide hands-on training for anthropology and archaeology students training to read and interpret the past.  A description in the exhibit itself best explains their value to scientists: “They are one of the clearest windows archaeologists have for reconstructing the practices and beliefs of ancient Peruvians.”

Cannon, as director of USU’s museum studies certificate, is anxious to get students analyzing the artifacts and discovering their histories.

“That’s what we’ll be working on over the coming years,” she said. “It’s a work in progress. But we want to get it out to say, ‘We have these pieces and we’re looking forward to studying them.’”

The assortment promises many tantalizing clues and puzzles. Did this small rough-hewn figurine once wear a necklace? And, is that horse hair — or something more bipedal — braided around the ceremonial baton?

The Peruvian pieces picture common scenes, religious figures and a lot of animals — birds and jaguars, for instance.

More than that, Cannon adds, “There’s a lot of violence depicted. I don’t know if it was a tumultuous period. Those will be all the questions we’ll look into.”

Right. Did we mention the figurine grasping a severed head, with its lips sewn tight?

Among the other questions that entice Cannon and her corps of students is whether the pieces were ceremonial or used in everyday life and by everyday folk.

“We’ll be interested in doing residue analysis” to look for grain and other leftovers, she said.

Dunham said she was delighted to keep the objects so close.

“We were just so happy that that we were able to find another USU institution,” she said. “Those objects were given to our museum originally as a part of Utah State University as an umbrella organization, and we felt it was important to keep those objects under the USU umbrella.”

Museum of Anthropology’s hours and other information can be found online.

Writer and contact: Janelle Hyatt, 435-797-0289, Janelle.Hyatt@usu.edu

Molly Cannon, curator and director of the Museum of Anthropology, displays a millennium-old textile remnant that is part of the museum's new exhibit of pre-Columbian artifacts. The brilliantly colored and expertly woven remnant is likely from a burial shroud.


Comments and questions regarding this article may be directed to the contact person listed on this page.

Next Story in Arts & Humanities

See Also