Yuriko Aquino
The content of this news item has been machine translated and may contain some inaccuracies with respect to the original content published in Spanish.
In an unprecedented exhibition, the British Museum - one of the most important and visited museums in the world - will exhibit "Peru: a journey through time". The exhibition is curated by Cecilia Pardo, a PUCP graduate in Archaeology and chief curator of the Museo de Arte de Lima.
Some 120 objects will be on display, of which around 60% are from British Museum collections that had not been studied or catalogued, and the other 40% are on loan from Peruvian institutions. "We explore the ways in which pre-Hispanic indigenous populations managed to adapt, survive and develop successful societies in one of the richest but most complex territories on the planet," explains Cecilia Pardo. She was contracted by the British institution to coordinate this exhibition through an open call.
In the first section, the visitor is introduced to the environment of the Central Andean region through audiovisual materials and objects from different cultures and components, such as ceramics, metals, shells, textiles and feathers. Then, a journey through time begins and goes from Chavín to Paracas, Nazca, Moche, Chimú, Wari and Inca. This is followed by the encounter between two worlds and the impact of the conquest. The tour ends with a look at the Andean legacy, showing how today's Peru is a reflection of a combination of cultures, religions and transformations over 3,000 years.
"Peru is on a par with any society, such as Egypt, Greece and Rome. I hope that this exhibition is just the beginning of a second stage that the British Museum can undertake to study and enhance the value of our country's collections," says curator Cecilia Pardo.
"The British public knows very little about Peru and the cultures that preceded the Incas. We want to show that not everything happened in relation to them, but that there were earlier populations that developed in an original way unlike many Western societies: examples are the quipus, the fact that they were able to adapt livestock and agriculture to wild territories, as well as having a different way of seeing life and death," says Pardo, who worked for a year and a half preparing this exhibition, conceived to coincide with our bicentenary, but delayed by the pandemic.
Among the objects that will travel from Peru are a 2,500-year-old gold headdress and funerary earmuffs, found at the Kuntur Wasi site in Cajamarca, decorated with relief motifs of human faces with feline fangs and snake appendages.
The oldest object to be loaned is a ceremonial vessel from the Cupisnique culture, dated to around 1200 BC, in the shape of a twisted human body, possibly a person with a disease that caused unusual flexibility, an ability revered in this culture.
For the curator, one of the greatest discoveries was 30 wooden sculptures (seven of which are on display) depicting naked prisoners with ropes around their necks. They were found on the Macabí islands, in front of the Moche territory, in Chicama, during the guano extraction period in the mid-19th century. "These are objects that have never been shown to the public before and have never been studied," reveals Pardo. He also maintains that it is rare to find Moche sculptures as well preserved as these.
"Peru is on a par with any society such as Egypt, Greece and Rome. I hope that this exhibition is just the beginning of a second stage that the British Museum can undertake to study and enhance the value of our country's collections," concludes the curator.
