Collecting Mesoamerican Art before 1940

Andrew D. Turner is a senior research specialist at the Getty Research Institute. Trained as an archaeologist and art historian, Turner’s work focuses on ancient Mesoamerican material culture, religion, and symbolism. He has held positions at Yale University and the University of Cambridge; at Getty he is the project lead for the Pre-Hispanic Art Provenance Initiative, which traces the movement of looted pre-Hispanic art through the international art market. Megan E. O'Neil is assistant professor of art history at Emory University and faculty curator at the Carlos Museum. Her publications address the ancient Maya and histories of collecting and exhibiting Mesoamerican art.

Introduction: The Art of Ancient Mesoamerica, Collections Forged before
1940 - Mary E. Miller
From the Market to the Museum: Nineteenth-Century Circulation, Display,
and Scholarly Study of Mesoamerican Artifacts in Italy and Beyond - Davide
Domenici
“An Idol, a Human Crane, an Incrusted Frilly Blue Mosaic Work Once Made
for Magic Oracles”: Curious Things from Mexico in Early German
Collections, 1525–1835 - Viola König
Ciriaco González Carvajal and Archaeological Collectionism in Late
Bourbon New Spain - Leonardo López Luján
The Objects of History and the History of Objects - Matthew H. Robb

The Chapultepec Castle Chimalli: A Habsburg-Repatriated Aztec Ocelot-
Hide Shield - Laura Filloy Nadal and María Olvido Moreno Guzmán

Collections and Recollections of “the Greatest of Nineteenth-Century Don
Quixotes”: Maximilian I’s Imperial Legacy in the Yale Peabody Museum -
Brooke Loukkala
Beyond the Bazaar: The Making of the Archaeological Collection at the
National Museum of Mexico - Miruna Achim
National Guardians and Imperial Contenders: The Development of
Mexico’s Archaeological Inspectorate - Adam T. Sellen
Lost at the Exposition: The Missing Collection of the First National Museum
of Guatemala - Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos
Casting for Quirigua: Edgar L. Hewett, the School of American Archaeology
and Ancient American Research, 1907–1916 - Khristaan D. Villela

Maya on the Mersey: Thomas Gann and Collecting in Early Twentieth-
Century Britain - Andrew D. Turner

“American Antiquities for an American Museum”: Frederick Church, Luigi
Petich, and the Founding Decades of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
(1870–1914) - Joanne Pillsbury

World
Collecting Mesoamerican Art before 1940: A New World of Latin American Antiquities

Imperialist Ambitions, Black Gold, and Stone Figures: Collecting Huastec
Sculptures before 1940 - Kim N. Richter
Branding West Mexico: How Collectors and Dealers Reshaped the
Archaeological Discourse - Christopher S. Beekman
Changing Geographies of the Mesoamerican Antiquities Market circa 1940:
Pierre Matisse and Earl Stendahl - Megan E. O’Neil
Afterword: Object Amnesia and the Archive - Megan E. O’Neil