In each of the two years of the seminar, there will be an intensive in-person assembly accompanied by regular virtual meetings. The in-person workshops will take place in Ecuador in September of 2023 and in Brazil during the second semester of 2024. The traveling section of the seminar will focus on the visual and material culture of the Amazon in the early modern period. At the same time, the series of virtual meetings will prepare these gatherings by giving a broad understanding of the history and culture of the Amazon basin. These will include talks from contemporary artists and artisans, and lectures from international invited scholars who are experts in different aspects of early modern Amazonian art and visual culture.
The first in-person seminar will be hosted by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito during September of 2023 and will include a visit to Quito and a fieldtrip to Cuenca.
The role of Quito in the exploration and colonization of the Amazon in the early modern period is paramount. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, missionaries trained in the Jesuit and Franciscan colleges and seminars from Quito conducted apostolic work in the region. These men wrote detailed accounts about the material and visual culture of the Amazon and produced some of the earliest western-style maps of the basin. Missionaries also guaranteed the circulation of artists, technologies and artworks both regionally and in a global context. In the nineteenth and twentieth century, collectors from Quito became interested in archaeological and ethnographic objects that are currently exhibited in local museums. In Quito, participants will visit the historic center and the ethnographic and archaeological collections at the Museo Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño and Museo Casa del Alabado. In the Ecuadorian Amazon, we will visit the town of Coca and the Museo Arqueológico y Centro Cultural de Orellana, as well as the workshops of local artisans and other centers of cultural interest. Finally, we will visit the ethnographic collections at the Museo Pumapungo, in the city of Cuenca.
The second in-person seminar hosted by the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, will take place in Belém do Pará during the second semester of 2024. This city occupies a central role in the early modern Amazonian history because of its strategic position at the mouth of the Amazon river. Belém was, in fact, the first European colony founded in the Amazon region, and, until the second half of 18th century, it was the capital of the State of Pará, which retained an independent political status with respect to the Southern part of Brazil. Nowadays the city is home to important artistic, archaeological and ethnographic collections, as well as to the Federal University of Pará and the Pará State University (both of them public). During the visit to Pará, students will have the opportunity to visit the extraordinary collections of the Goeldi Museum and other historic buildings, such as the Jesuit Church of Santo Alexandre. Academic activities, including lectures and meetings with local faculty, will be organized jointly with local post-graduate programs specialized in the study of the Amazon.