A panoramic view of the arts of South America, with special emphasis on Peru.

The final installment in the series of catalogues of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection, Pre-Columbian Art from Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks examines a comprehensive collection of jade and gold objects from Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia. Full color photographs illustrate the breathtaking works of Indigenous artists and artisans.

Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador: Toward an Integrated Approach presents current research on the prehispanic indigenous peoples in the lands between Mesoamerica and the Andes. Specialists have contributed to this illustrated book on topics ranging from historical and theoretical perspectives to reports on recent excavations.

Organized by El Museo del Barrio in New York to coincide with a major exhibition, this is the first comprehensive English-language publication on the fascinating legacy of Taiacute;no art and culture. Showcasing over one hundred rare and beautiful ceremonial and domestic artworks and individual masterpieces of this ancient culture -- produced in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti, and the Bahamas between A.D. 1200 and 1500 --Taiacute;noincludes examples of finely detailed and polished sculptures carved in wood, precious ornaments of shell and bone, and ceramics decorated with animals, birds, and intricate geometric motifs. The contributors include ten of the foremost scholars of pre-Columbian culture and art, and an appendix features writings from Spanish explorers who had contact with the Taiacute;no. Of Arawak descent, the Taiacute;no -- whose ancestors migrated to the Caribbean from the Amazon Basin in South America during the sixth century -- were the first people encountered by Christopher Columbus. Although they ceased to exist as an autonomous society within sixty years of the arrival of Spanish colonizers, the Taiacute;no -- skilled agriculturists and navigators and accomplished weavers, potters, and carvers -- developed a complex political, religious, and social system, and made a substantial contribution to the biological, cultural, and linguistic makeup of large areas of the Caribbean. To this date, Caribbean communities in the Antilles and in New York and other large American cities exhibit the survival of Taiacute;no practices in their worldviews, religious beliefs, language, music, and food.

Traces the development of Latin American art from 20,000 BCE to modern times, from the southern tip of Argentina to the Rio Grande.

This volume accompanies a major international loan exhibition featuring more than three hundred works of art, many rarely or never before seen in the United States. It traces the development of gold working and other luxury arts in the Americas from antiquity until the arrival of Europeans in the early sixteenth century. Presenting spectacular works from recent excavations in Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico, this exhibition focuses on specific places and times—crucibles of innovation—where artistic exchange, rivalry, and creativity led to the production of some of the greatest works of art known from the ancient Americas. The book and exhibition explore not only artistic practices but also the historical, cultural, social, and political conditions in which luxury arts were produced and circulated, alongside their religious meanings and ritual functions. Golden Kingdoms creates new understandings of ancient American art through a thematic exploration of indigenous ideas of value and luxury. Central to the book is the idea of the exchange of materials and ideas across regions and across time: works of great value would often be transported over long distances, or passed down over generations, in both cases attracting new audiences and inspiring new artists. The idea of exchange is at the intellectual heart of this volume, researched and written by twenty scholars based in the United States and Latin America.

Offers an in-depth look at pre-Columbian sources of modern art.

Centuries before the Incas, a number of advanced cultures flourished in the Andes. This beautifully illustrated study examines the rise and fall of these different peoples, and their magnificent legacy of design and craftsmanship. Surviving artifacts show incredible skill and sophistication, from exquisitely detailed textiles, ceramics, and metalwork to spectacular architectural sites. Tracing the connections between symbolism and belief, art, and myth, Treasures of the Andes sets the riches of South America in their historical and regional context and restores an important missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the world's great civilizations.

As diverse as its history and as varied as the countries that make up the continent, South American cooking combines the agricultural greatness of the pre-Columbian native peoples--responsible for cultivating the potato, tomato, chile pepper, and corn--with the culinary traditions of later arrivals from Spain, Portugal, the west coast of Africa, Italy, and elsewhere to create a delicious cuisine of dimension and depth. Felipe Rojas-Lombardi presents a spectacular array of both innovative and traditional recipes. He begins each chapter with a discussion of how that particular food fits into the fabric of the meal. The more than 250 recipes include ceviches, escabeches, empanadas, tamales, soups, seafood, poultry, meat, vegetables and grains, and desserts; and finally there is a chapter on such basics as how to prepare eggless mayonnaise and corn beer, and how to clean squid. An enormously talented cook and teacher, Felipe brings North Americans the culinary diversity and great food of the continent to our south.