Re/Collecting the Andes: Andean Art, Science, and the Sacred at Penn State

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September 14 - December 8, 2024

Barbara and Lee Maimon Teaching Gallery, Level 2

In 1531, the world’s largest land empire was that of the Inca in South America. They called their empire Tawantinsuyu (pronounced Tah-wahn-tin-soo-yoo), which means “The Four Parts in One,” and inherited more than 12,000 years of agricultural, cultural, intellectual, and religious innovation in the Andes. In 1532, Spanish conquistadors invaded. Hundreds of thousands died of enslavement, disease, starvation, and war, but Inca and Andean society survived. In the five centuries since, outsiders have claimed Inca wisdom and resources for themselves, even as Tawantinsuyu’s heirs have made new knowledge and art to recollect all that wasn’t lost.  

 

Re/Collecting the Andes brings this story of cultural reclamation to Penn State. The exhibition originated with faculty members Christopher Heaney and Amara Solari and their students in the course “Exhibiting Incas,” which interrogated the ethics of collecting and displaying Andean objects. The class collaborated with Penn State’s Peruvian Student Association, as well as curators and educators at the Palmer Museum of Art, the Matson Museum of Anthropology, and the Eberly Family Special Collections Library to identify Penn State’s unique Andean holdings. Students put those holdings in dialogue with the art of two modern Peruvian artists, Fernando “Coco” Bedoya and Kukuli Velarde. 

 

Welcome to Peru at Penn State.   

 

Organized by the Palmer Museum of Art and curated by faculty members Christopher Heaney, Amara Solari, and the Fall 2022 students in their ARTH/HIST 497 "Exhibiting Incas" course.