Gifts of Objects Enhance American and Asian Section Collections

At its June 2022 meeting, the Penn Museum Acquisitions Committee voted unanimously to accept three collections of objects and four collections of archival records. All three of the collections of objects were especially meaningful because of the donors’ longstanding connections with the Museum and will enrich our understanding of musical, agricultural, and religious traditions across continents.

A gift of 16 objects to the American Section comes from the estate of Joseph J. Rishel, legendary Curator of European Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), originally in the collection of his late wife, PMA Director Anne d’Harnoncourt. Many were passed to her by her father, René d’Harnoncourt, former director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) and frequent guest on the Penn Museum’s weekly half-hour television show What in the World? ®, which ran from 1951 to 1965. The elder d’Harnoncourt was a champion of the arts of Indigenous populations in the 1940s and 50s through his positions as head of the Indian Arts & Craft Board and at MoMA.

The Rishel/d’Harnoncourt collection includes rare pieces of Indigenous American jewelry, including pieces that Anne d’Harnoncourt often wore from the Zuni and Navajo peoples that are stunning examples of silver casting technique and of joining small pieces of stone and shell. “[Zuni Pueblo] tradition connects back to the jewelry of their Pueblo ancestors recovered in the archaeological record at places like Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, ca.1100 CE,” notes Lucy Fowler William, Associate Curator in the American section.

The objects passed down from René d’Harnoncourt include Meso-American stone figurines that he acquired in travels to places including Mexico City and Chile. These artifacts carry stories related to the development of American modernism during the first half of the 20th century through art forms distinct from that of Europe at the time. “The inclusion of objects that he owned and lived with into our collections will allow us to talk about that legacy and his great admiration for the Indigenous artistic traditions of North, Central, and South America,” says American Section Keeper Bill Wierzbowski. A second gift to the American Section comes from Curator Emeritus Clark Erickson, also Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology, acquired during his work in Bolivia and Peru, where he specialized in the use of intensive agricultural techniques in the ancient Andean region. The collection includes three Tarka wood flutes acquired in Bolivia in the 1970s, which share the rich, living musical tradition of the region. It also includes a small-scale, palm fiber Manioc press acquired in Iquitos, Peru—an excellent example of an old and critically important object used to squeeze out and remove natural toxins in manioc to make it edible. The final object in the Erickson gift is a Quechua Chakitaqlla or foot plow he commissioned from maker Fidel Vilca in 1981: an important and unique addition to the collection as a modern example of an ancient tool still used in Peru and Bolivia today to transform the rugged landscape for farming.

The third gifted collection is from Bruce Pearson, in honor of his late wife Dr. Lee Horne, who was a Research Associate in the Museum’s Asian Section and Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA) and editor of Expedition from 1991 to 1996. The collection comprises seven brass castings collected by Dr. Horne as part of her ethnoarchaeological fieldwork on Indian metallurgical traditions in the 1980s and 1990s. The Indian brass artisans whom she acquired these from came to the Penn Museum for demonstrations on casting techniques as part of her project and were featured in Expedition’s special issue devoted to “Crafts of India” in 1987 (Vol. 29-3). Her accompanying documentation accompanies the objects and is now housed in the Penn Museum Archives.

Asian Section Curators Kathleen Morrison and Adam Smith appreciate these objects both for their scholarly merit and as visually impressive works of art, describing them as “truly amazing” examples of their kind, and envision them in a future exhibit on religious traditions.

Ava Cappitelli is a junior at Bryn Mawr College majoring in the History of Art. As the Penn Museum Marketing & Communications Intern in summer 2022, she assisted in editing Expedition and designed content for the Museum’s social media. She also presented a Daily Dig program on Middle Eastern ceramics.