Pre-Columbian collection finds a home on the Hill
Pre-Columbian collection finds a home on the Hill
While stationed in Latin America with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization in the Fifties, Tom Carroll, PhD '51, perused markets and street vendors for artifacts. Fertility figurines, mythological creatures, and vessels shaped like snarling jaguars lined the walls of his Washington, D.C., home for more than forty years. "I became quite fascinated with this art because it was an expression of the artistic achievements and technological sophistication of these early people," Carroll says. "I started buying these pieces because I liked them. I was collecting for pleasure." What began as a hobby grew to about 500 objects—primarily from Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Costa Rica—which Carroll gave to the Johnson Museum in 2006. In March, the museum launched an exhibition of Carroll's collection, running until June 15. "It's going to be a new major offering," says assistant curator Andrew Weislogel, PhD '00. "We are now up there as having a prominent pre-Columbian collection."
Spanning from 3000 BC to 1500 AD, the collection includes ceramic bowls, musical instruments, tools, pots, and metal breastplates. Carroll, who will turn eighty-nine in June, says his recent retirement from a career with the World Bank inspired him to make his art available to a wider audience. "You reach a point where you are thinking of your own mortality," he says. "While my collection may not be as valuable from a monetary point of view as some others, it has a certain interest and I wanted it to go into the public domain."
During his stint with the UN, Carroll spent extensive time in Ecuador. That nation's artifacts make up the bulk of his collection and represent its greatest strength, says curator Laura Johnson-Kelly '85, who notes that pre-Columbian objects from the region are of particular interest because they are not well studied. "In general, people are much more familiar with the culture of Peru than of Ecuador," she says. "There hasn't been the same attention devoted to it by foreign archaeologists. Ecuador is a smaller country, and it does not have monumental sites to attract people."
As a result, many of the objects in the collection have an unknown date, cultural origin, or function. The curators hope the exhibit and its comprehensive catalogue will encourage academic debate and discovery. "The collection will make us a destination for researchers and scholars," Weislogel says. "It will put Cornell on the map for people who want to study this material."
— Bekah Grant '08