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Pre-Columbian Installation

I conceived, curated and designed this installation on pre-Columbian art for Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); combining interior design, sculptural furniture as well as curating museum artefacts. The installation incorporates 3 galleries in which I used artefacts from the museum’s vast pre-Columbian holdings. By arranging the artefacts within display cases, which I designed, I question traditional modes of taxonomy and historiography, based on geography and chronology. The display cabinets are made from laser-cut organic forms that stand in sharp contrast to the rectangular display cases found in most (European) art museums. In a few places the cabinets form benches; elsewhere they flatten out to hold explanatory wall texts or, for example, a Diego Rivera painting. The installation signalled a change of emphasis for LACMA with a commitment to reconceptualising Latin American art through a combination of art practice and curation. The installation received both mainstream and specialist scholarly attention, including: Holland Cotter, ‘Ancient Art, Served on a Present-Day Platter’, New York Times (26th August 2008); Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times (1st August 2008); and a feature article by Cecilia Klein considering the project’s implications for museum curating, ‘In the Belly of the Beast’, Artforum (January 2009).