Living the Landscape: Peruvian Ceramics and Textiles at MoFA

Living the Landscape, curated by Art History doctoral student Elizabeth Spraggins and instructor Ann Durham, is currently showing at the FSU Museum of Fine Arts. This compelling exhibition brings together a collection of ancient Peruvian Paracas (700 BC-AD1) textiles and Nasca (100 BC-AD 700) ceramics and textiles from the John and Mary Carter Collection of Pre-Columbian Artifacts. The Carters donated their collection of Mesoamerican and South American art objects to Florida State University in 1944. Mary graduated from Florida State College for Women (now FSU) in 1936 and expressed her desire that the  collection be available for scholarly research and exhibition.

Since many artifacts were displaced from their original location, researchers have to depend on the objects’ forms and images to reconstruct the lives and cultures of ancient Peruvian peoples. Living the Landscape’s  visual display introduces the aesthetics and multi-symbolic meanings of ancient Peruvian artifacts. The exhibit is designed to encourage “seeing to feel” the Nasca world through different eyes.

Living the Landscape opened on August 30 and will remain open through November 17.

Exhibition Co-Curators Ann Durham (L) and Elizabeth Spraggins (2nd from R) with Diane and Dale Olsen at the Living the Landscape opening on August 30, 2013. Diane Olsen curated a previous Carter Collection Exhibition at MoFA in 1978. Her husband, author and retired FSU professor of ethnomusicology Dale Olsen, played a Peruvian flute at the exhibition opening.