CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Krannert Art Museum’s collection of ancient Andean art is an eclectic mix of textiles, ceramics, metalwork and jewelry, representing the work of many cultures over a period of 4,000 years.
But its presentation hasn’t changed significantly since the permanent exhibition of the objects was installed in 1988. The museum is researching the collection in preparation for a major reinstallation that will provide a more dynamic look at its diversity and complexity. The collaborative effort involves an interdisciplinary group of scholars at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the U. of I. Chicago and Chicago’s Field Museum, as well as experts from other museums in the U.S. and Peru.
“The collection is important, but it’s not very well-known,” said KAM director Jon Seydl. “Most collections in the U.S. focus on the high points of ancient Andean cultures: Moche, Inca and Wari. In this collection, there are some of those kinds of objects, but there also is extensive material from other cultures that you don’t see on view in many museums. It’s a different kind of collection that can tell a different story, much more about a sense of interconnectedness.”
The current installation presents the objects according to the cultures, regions and periods in which they were produced – categories based on the taxonomies used for archaeological research, and the way most museums exhibit permanent collections, said Allyson Purpura, the senior curator and the curator of global African art for KAM. She is leading the reinstallation project with Kasia Szremski, the associate director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Illinois and an archaeologist whose works focuses on the north-central coast of Peru and the political economies of the region.
The reinstallation will be a departure from such a fixed format, Purpura said. Instead, it will explore how artistic knowledge, aesthetics and practices moved across cultures and time periods and influenced one another.
“The artworks are not these static, unchanging things created in isolation. They were part of complex political, social and economic relations,” Purpura said. “Our aim is to talk about how imagery is created, informed and changed in different contexts of encounter with others. What’s so great about our collection is we have the objects to tell those stories.”
About 600 of the 700 items in the Andean collection were acquired in 1967 from collector Fred Olson, an industrial chemist and amateur archaeologist. The reinstallation will present the histories of the objects, including how they were made and used, and how they traveled through trade, pilgrimage, excavation and sale on the art market.
“What I’m really excited about is that the collection tells Peruvian or Andean histories from the bottom up. We’re looking at how small-scale local cultures engaged with broader Andean ideology in creative and unexpected ways,” Szremski said. “What the collection does really well is make people aware of the fact that there was a history in the Andes prior to the arrival of Europeans.”
The many objects from small, localized cultural groups can show the dynamic nature of the cultures, their interactions and how they responded to power, authority, political maneuvering and trade happening throughout the area, Szremski said.
“It can be easy to miss the dynamism of ancient Andean polities when you focus on imperial styles that are typically very standardized, but when you have ceramics that are variable, with a lot of inventiveness and a much more free-form kind of art, it’s easier to visually represent that story of the dynamism happening all over the Andes,” she said.
The ancient objects also will be connected to contemporary art and culture, including iconography from thousands of years ago that is used in modern weaving and ceramic designs, and objects from archaeological sites that have meaning to Andean communities today.
An important feature of the reinstallation is providing access to the collection for both the regional community and students, as well as distant researchers. The gallery exhibition will include interactive digital components that allow visitors to learn more about the context of the objects. The same interactive components will be available to people engaging with the collection online.
Information about the collection will be available in three languages – English, Spanish and Quechua, an indigenous Andean language – to connect to Peruvian communities and local Latinx communities.
The reinstallation will acknowledge the histories of items that have been looted from burial sites, Purpura said.
“Even though KAM has legal title to these works, it remains incumbent upon us to call attention to how museums are implicated in their fraught history and the loss of cultural information,” she said. “Like most collections in museums, these archaeological objects were dug up and sold. We want to be transparent about the journeys these objects have taken.”
Seydl said the work on the Andean collection is part of a renewed focus on the museum’s permanent collections, including the 2012 installation of “Encounters: The Arts of Africa” and the 2019 presentation of “Art Since 1948.”
KAM is currently in the research phase of the project, with deinstallation of the current gallery and a complete gallery redesign slated for 2022, then the reopening in fall 2023.
“KAM’s Andean holdings are amazing, but the current installation makes it harder to see that. This new approach will be a revelation,” Seydl said.
In addition to a major award for this project from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, KAM received a 2018 grant from the University of Illinois’ Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and Humanities for the reinstallation of the ancient Andean arts collection. The grant money supported collaborative research with University of Illinois Chicago anthropology professor Brian Bauer and Field Museum associate curator Ryan Williams; workshops with various scholars; collection research by two UIC graduate students; a visit by a textile specialist who examined the 200 textiles and textile fragments in the collection; and two undergraduate students who are compiling documentation on the collection.