This resource is an application for a Post-PhD Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. This project examines the dynamics of the Peruvian antiquities market between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the study of collections of so-called forgeries housed in five museums in Germany. To do so, I rename these works neo-antiquities, a term that better fits their position as objects that engaged the emergent market of Peruvian antiques and souvenirs at this time. To address the interconnected topics of production, collection and circulation of neo-antiquities, I will examine documents and photographs held by museums, and conduct formal and stylistic analyses of the objects, recreate the ownership chain of these objects through provenance research, and look at curatorial practices and discourses that shaped their trajectories in the museums that house them. This project further engages the professionalization of museum staff, the rise of the curator as an authority in the authentication process, and elucidates on the materialization of desire from collectors’ perspectives. Importantly, the proposed research focuses on objects “unloved” by virtue of its determined inauthenticity, and brings forward a complicated heritage commonly seen through Western perspectives and discourses.
Maria Boza Cuadros (Sat,) studied this question.