Fragile Memories: Images of Archeology and Community at Copan, 1891-1900, at the Peabody Museum
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology
Details:
In the late nineteenth century, Peabody Museum expedition teams set out to remote areas of Mexico and Central America, often with little inkling of what they might experience and barely prepared to navigate the cultural encounters essential to their missions. The Peabody Museum holds the written and visual records of these early expeditions and recently completed a two-year project to digitize over 10,000 nineteenth-century glass-plate negatives. The earliest images in this amazing and unique collection were photographed at Copán, during the museum's pioneering archaeological expeditions to the site. These images offer a wealth of archaeological information for current research along with a visual narrative of the budding town and the archaeologists ' interactions with the local community. As the excavations unfold before our eyes, scenes of the Copán community also emerge. But, who are the people in these images, and what effect did the excavations have on their community? Peabody Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphics director Barbara Fish, wo has worked on archaeology projects at Copan for 30 years, set out to recover what lingering memories survive of the people and places in these fragile images. Working with Harvard and Honduran students, Fash interviewed members of the Copan community to reconnect this lost history with the images. Fragile Memories highlights the changed nature of archaeological practices, how these newly digitized images advance ongoing studies, and how archaeologists and communities continue to shape one another's lives.
The Curator
Barbara Fash is director of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions project at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. Barbara Fash has illustrated and studied Maya monuments for more than thirty years. She co-directs the Copan Mosaics Project with William L. Fash, directed the Hieroglyphic Stairway Conservation and Research Project (1997-2001), the Copan Research Library and Archive Project (199-2001), and was head museographer and exhibit designer for the Copan Sculpture Museum (1993-1996). She co-edited Pre-Columbian Water Management: Ideology, Ritual and Power (2006) with Lisa Lucero, and curated the Distinguished Casts (2001) exhibit at the Peabody Museum.
Opening June 4, 2008 5-7 pm, Curator’s talk, 5:45 PM
June 4, 2008–December 31, 2009
About the Peabody Museum
The Peabody Museum is among the oldes archaeological and ethnographic museums in the world with one of the finest collections of human cultural history found anywhere. It is home to superb materials from Africa, ancient Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America in particular. In addition to its archaeological and ethnographic holdings, the Museum's photographic archives, one of the largest of its kind, holds more than 500,000 historical photographs, dating from the mid-19th century to the present and chroncling anthropology, archaeology, and world culture.
Hours: 9 am- 5 pm 7 days a week
Admission: $9.00 adults, $7.00 students and seniors, $6.00 for children, 3-18. Free with Harvard ID or Museum membership.
