An exhibition organized by Dr. Kris Driggers uses single objects—from Moche ceramics to Chimú textiles and colonial paintings—to trace social, religious, and material continuities across the Andean region from the first millennium CE through the 20th century.
Microhistory method: the show treats individual works as windows onto broader Andean social, political, and spiritual practices.
Connections across time: pre-Columbian ritual objects and colonial-era Catholic paintings reveal continuities and transformations in Andean spirituality and material culture.
Specific highlights: a Moche anthropomorphic maize stirrup-spout vessel and a Chimú tunic illustrate ritual agriculture and textile status in precontact societies.
Beth Devillier A microhistory highlights a single person, place, object, or event, and uses it as a window into broader historical questions. By examining these works in close detail, the exhibition reveals larger social, cultural, political, and historical dynamics. The artworks on view include textiles, ceramic sculptures, paintings, metalwork, and feather arts, establishing broad narratives of creativity, spirituality, and cosmovision in the Andean world.
Their protective role echoes earlier conopas, small carved stone llamas and alpacas carried and offered for protection and abundance, traditions that Indigenous potters adapted after the Spanish introduced cattle to the Americas. Artist once known, "Anthropomorphic maize vessel," Moche culture, Peru, CE 300-600, earthenware. The Anthropomorphic maize vessel is an example of a stirrup-spout ceramic vessel, consisting of a chamber, an arched "stirrup," and a single spout on top.
Image courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Decorative Moche ceramics such as this example are most commonly found in burials, but are thought to have been used by the living. Many Moche ceramics likely served ritual, ceremonial, and funerary functions alongside everyday use, holding chicha, a fermented corn (maize) beer, fresh water, and, more rarely, other ritual brews.
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