Long before the arrival of the Spaniards, the people of South America had a system of recorded information that was portable, precise, and so complex that it remains undeciphered today.

The long-lived Wari Empire and vast Inka Empire employed sophisticated devices called khipu to record information, such as census data and labor obligations. Made of cords, both Inka and Wari khipu seem to have recorded not only quantitative or statistical content, but narrative information as well. The variation in cord structures, colors, wrapping patterns, and knots encoded and conveyed information, while the basic khipu elements—flexible knotted cords—offered a lightweight and compact means of transporting information across distances.

This exhibition is the first to bring together examples of Wari, Inka, and Colonial khipu. Less than a dozen complete Wari khipu are known to exist in museum collections, and three will be on display at Dumbarton Oaks, along with interactive displays that will help visitors understand the way khipu worked, how they were made, and how information was encoded.
Juan Antonio Murro, Assistant Curator of the Pre-Columbian Collection, is curating this exhibition with Jeffrey Splitstoser, PhD, an expert on Wari khipu and ancient textiles and Assistant Research Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University.

– From doaks.org. Click here for more information.

Thanks to member Anne Cassidy for the information below!

This is a good year for Mesoamerican manuscript studies at the CAA conference in New York this week, with two back-to-back sessions.

On Thursday, 2:00 – 3:30 in the Bryant Suite on the 2nd floor there will be: Painted Books of Pre-Hispanic Mexico: New Discoveries

Panel speakers: Dr. Merideth Paxton (University of New Mexico) The Opossum and the Uayeb in the New Year Pages of the Madrid Codex

            Dr. Susan Milbrath (University of Florida)  Yearbearer Imagery in Postclassic Codices: Thresholds of Time and Space

            Dr. Gabrielle Vail (University of North Carolina)  Cultural Interactions in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica: Exploring the Repainted Pages of the Codex Vaticanus B and Cognate Almanacs of the Maya Madrid Codex

            Dr. Élodie Dupey  (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)  The Chromatic Palettes of the Codex Vaticanus B: Characterization and Analysis in the Framework of the Mesoamerican Manuscripts’ Color Technologies

            Dr. Jennifer Saracino (Flagler College)  Indigenous Artistic Process & Collaboration in the Mapa Uppsala (c. 1540)

Immediately afterward, 4:00 – 5:30 in the Grand Ballroom East on the third floor, Dr. Elizabeth Hill Boone (Tulane University) will be named this year’s CAA Distinguished Scholar in a special session. Dr. Boone’s distinguished work in the area of Mesoamerican manuscripts has been a major contribution to Mesoamerican studies.

Also, for those of you interested in modern and contemporary Latin American art, Kaira Cabañas has a book release event:

FROM:
ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES
BOOK RELEASE EVENT!
KAIRA M. CABAÑAS’S “LEARNING FROM MADNESS: BRAZILIAN MODERNISM AND GLOBAL CONTEMPORARY ART”
Kaira M. Cabañas’s “Learning from Madness” offers an invigorating series of case studies that track the parallels between psychiatric patients’ art works in Western Europe and its reception by influential artists there, to an analogous but altogether distinct situation in Brazil. The book also explores how this “outsider art” continues to raise important questions in the contemporary global art circuit. Cabañas turns to the films of Javier Téllez, an artist who compellingly engages the history of psychiatry and the legacy of creative expression within it.
To celebrate the release of “Learning from Madness,” Cabañas and Téllez will be here in person to host a special event. The evening will feature a short reading, as well as a screening of Tellez’s film CALIGARI AND THE SLEEPWALKER (2008). A reception will follow the screening in the AFA lobby.
“Learning from Madness: Brazilian Modernism and Global Contemporary Art” is published by the University of Chicago Press, 2018. A representative from the University of Chicago Press will be on site to sell books.

Looking forward to seeing you at these events!

Below is a short list of ALAA-sponsored sessions and meetings taking place during the upcoming College Art Association (CAA) conference in New York, February 13-16 that will be of interest to members.

“Open Sessions for Emerging Scholars of Latin American Art” (Association for Latin American Art ALAA)

Time: Friday, February 15, 2019: 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM

Location: New York Hilton Midtown – 2nd Floor – Clinton Suite

Chairs: Theresa Avila, CSU Channel Islands; Arden Decker

Spectacle of Stone: The Art of Passage in the Ancient Maya Landscape Catherine H. Popovici, The University of Texas at Austin

Global Import: Implications of Transnational Conflicts in the Art of Juan Manuel Echavarría and Doris Salcedo Jamie DiSarno, University at Buffalo

Art in an Age of Crisis: Women Artists and the Mexican War on Drugs Alberto McKelligan Hernández, Portland State University

ALAA Business Meeting: Awards! Elections! Announcements! Snacks provided! Bring your own beverage!

Time: Thursday, February 14, 2019: 12:30PM–2:00PM
Location: New York Hilton Midtown – 4th Floor – New York

The CAA on-line schedule is now searchable https://caa.confex.com/caa/2019/meetingapp.cgi. Simply select “Latin America,” “Latinx,” or “Caribbean” from the “subject area” menu on the left hand side, and a list of relevant sessions appears.

We hope to see you there!

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