Hidden in plain sight for all of Austin to see is an engaging collection of pre-Columbian pottery and stone carvings that cuts a path from Mesoamerica down to pointy Peru. One of the many treasure troves scattered around the University of Texas campus, this intimate and lively collection is found on the first floor of the Fine Arts Library, where it’s open to the public during the library’s long hours – virtually day and night. It just might send you in search of a book to tell you more about these enigmatic and intriguing objects.
Why in the world a library would be the site of this collection is an interesting story, but first, the collection. It is a mix of mysterious statuettes and inventive vessels, seeming to extol every imaginable form that clay can squeeze into. As humans, our brains are stimulated by variety and engaged by mystery, and this large grouping keeps the gray matter lighting up.
Hundreds of the 5,000 objects in the collection are on display, and the vessels in particular, small in scale, are entrancing for their intimacy and familiarity. They are mysterious for the average layperson like me, wrapped in a shroud of questions: What were they used for? What was life like for the people who made them? Some appear to be ritual objects, evoking the spiritual world; some are everyday; and some straddle both worlds.
One grouping of ceramic figures really knocked me out, because each was anything but familiar. From the Chancay culture of Peru, three lines of painted terra-cotta statuettes ascend in height, from about a foot to 2 feet high. Their bodies are nude, with painted faces and heads. They appear to have wide, outstretched hands attached to their bodies, as if in greeting, in exclamation, or in fright. Their large bodies have a palpable feel of aged flesh carved in subtle ripples across the surface, while their forms feel inflated from within, as if animated by the breath of life.
It is this sense of life that permeates the collection and makes it so fascinating. The collection migrated from the Texas Memorial Museum, where it sat in storage, to the Department of Art & Art History several years ago. Peruvian art historian and archaeologist Steve Bourget, who wanted to use the collection as a teaching tool, was instrumental in the transfer. “People are surprised by the aesthetic of pre-Columbian art,” says Bourget. “It has a sense of immediacy. You look at these things, and it feels like you could have a relationship with it.”
Perhaps Bourget’s favorite piece is an intriguing small Olmec baby figure, standing up with hands together. “It is an outstanding piece. The quality of the position of the baby and how it stands,” he says, set it apart.
Many people are familiar with small Olmec figurines: intense, alive, alert sculptures with wide-awake eyes, often with outstretched arms. These figures, in the midst of an indefinable action or event, contain qualities of both adults and babies while being neither one nor the other. They join other statues, bowls, and vessels, some elaborately painted, most small enough that one can imagine holding or using them – part of what makes them so appealing. They represent many time periods and cultures, including the Aztec, Maya, Moche, Nasca, and Chimú Empire.
But why display the collection at the FAL? Around the same time that Bourget was helping transfer the collection, FAL head librarian Laura Schwartz was searching for new ways to attract library users back into the building. More than a decade of Internet access to library materials had caused a dip in library populations across the country. But people were discovering that working alone at home or elsewhere isn’t the panacea it appears to be. Students were ready for a “new” communal place to work. Schwartz asked for faculty proposals, and Bourget proffered a display of the artifacts in the library.
“We think of the space as more than a place of books,” notes Schwartz. “Nationally, academic institutions are where students develop lifelong loves. People explore their loves – art, mathematics, physics – and this is a way to do it.”
That win-win partnership benefits the city as well as the UT community. What’s old is new again.
This article appears in February 19 • 2010.