‘Enchanted’ worlds
First-of-its-kind Menil show explores visual history of the Andes
An intensely yellow wall announces the arrival of a new exhibition at the Menil Collection. It’s a headturning hue — appearing marigold from some angles and almost ivory from others.
A small, ceramic object is fashioned squarely at its center. Behind a glass case, “Blackware SingleSpout Vessel Depicting Bird Pecking on Fruit” offers a striking contrast against the floor-to-ceiling panel and hints at what’s to come.
Juxtaposition is a central theme of “Enchanted: Visual Histories of the Central Andes,” explains Paul R. Davis, curator of collections. There are more than 40 ceramics, textiles and pieces of festival dress from the western side of South America on display. A selection of gelatin silver photographs by Pierre Verger adds narration and context, Davis says.
The exhibition, running through Nov. 14, is timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Peru’s independence. “Enchanted” showcases a mixture of works from both the Menil’s permanent collection and artwork on loan from the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, N.M.
As the Menil’s first exhibition of archaeological material and visual culture from the region, museum staffers compiled an online publication of essays from notable Andean scholars to provide deeper insight. Like why that wall is so yellow. “It’s a riff on another piece within the exhibition,” Rebecca Rabinow, director of the Menil Collection, says playfully.
She’s referring to an impossibleto-miss trio of saffron and lapis macaw-feather panels. It’s hard to imagine that a total of 96 panels, measuring 3 feet high and 8 feet wide, were discovered inside individual jars in 1943. Or that there are 200,000 feathers on each.
“How much time, how much labor went into knotting those feathers to cotton?” Davis muses, alluding to the exhibition’s other big motif. He notes that no silver or gold appears in the exhibition. “(‘Enchanted’) highlights the craftsman-
ship of everyday people.”
Visitors smile at the thought of colonial-era “keros,” or wood cups, used to consume “chica,” aka corn beer.
Other objects on view include ceramic vessels of the Nazca culture (100 B.C.-800 A.D.), textiles from the Wari ( 600-1000 A.D.) and Chimú (1150-1450 A.D.) civilizations, and festival dress from the 20th and 21st century worn during religious ceremonies in Peru.
One of the most significant items is the Chimú “Prisoner Textile,” a preIncan fabric fragment dating to the early 1200s. The two-panel piece was last seen publicly 36 years ago in Paris for an exhibition titled “The Rhyme and the Reason,” when thenFrench President Francois Mitterand inaugurated a 637-piece selection of artwork from Dominique de Menil’s collection.
“It’s the first time it’s ever been on display in this building,” Brad Epley, chief conservator at the Menil Collection, says. “It was exhibited most recently just before the museum opened and before that in 1973, 1972 and 1968 — a very limited exhibition history.”
Funds awarded from a 2021 Bank of America Art Conservation Project grant helped restore the “Prisoner Textile” to its current state. The panels are fragile and light-sensitive; specialists stabilized the edges by creating a special mount with a supportive base secured by insect pins. “It was part of much larger textile (that was) 100 feet wide. Two sides are cut, so threads began to fray,” Epley says.
The scene in muted yellow, green and blue depicts a hierarchy. Davis points to fishermen from the coasts — “You can tell by their hats” — in the center, then oyster divers and, finally, human figures being held by feline creatures along the edges.
In her online essay “Fragment of the Chimú Prisoner Textile,” Susan E. Bergh identifies prisoners by their nudity and neck ropes. She writes, “Scattered disembodied heads suggest the prisoners are on the verge of sacrifice, a known Chimú practice likely aimed in part at balancing the cosmic forces that controlled nature’s sometimes devastating whims.”
That story of violence — and victory — is illustrated in other objects, too. One “Dance Cape” (c. 1930-40) with a stitched inscription “The Slavery of the Blacks” shows 19th-century Peruvian President Ramón Castilla y Marquesado surrounded by Africans he liberated after abolishing slavery. Another “Dance Cape” (c. 1945-75) features the medieval Saint George slaying World War II Nazi forces, as Amy B. Groleau details in her online essay “A Joyous Spectacle: Making and Collecting Huancayo Dance Capes.”
The “Dance Cape” quartet and two dance hats — “Qhapac Negra Dance Costume Hat” (2006) and “Qhapac Qolla Dance Hat” (2008) — worn by both men and women during fiestas are the only objects flecked with modern embellishment or synthetics.
“Primary colors are really important here because they’re the basis of all other colors,” Davis says. “Red, yellow and blue are natural pigments.”
Verger’s black-and-white photographs also play an integral role. His travels throughout the Andes between 1939 and 1945 were partially financed by John and Dominique de Menil. Verger later presented the couple with two portfolios of images taken from religious Andean festivals that have never been exhibited — until now.
“Virgin of Bethlehem,” an oil-on-canvas painting by an unidentified artist from the 18th century, marries the two worlds. Nestled among a gallery wall of Verger’s framed work, graphic prints and tactile objects of “Enchanted” finally intersect.
“It’s a painting, of a painting, of a statue,” Davis explains of the Virgin Mary dressed on theme in yellow, red and blue. Her embroidered garments are so vivid you can almost feel them.