6 pm reception
6:30 pm gallery talk

In 1955 a group of politically engaged Peruvian scholars embarked on a journey to a remote region of the Andes to explore the life of the Q’ero peoples, the alleged last untouched descendants of the Incas. This exploration resulted in the collection of several objects, among them textiles, looms, and musical instruments. In this collection, housed today at the American Museum of Natural History, two woven bags for carrying coca—chuspas—stand out for their stylistic features and their apparent ancient manufacture. In this gallery talk, Antonio Sánchez-Gómez will explore how these chuspas provide a rich trove of information that ranges from the relation of the bags to the Inca culture, to the colonial and contemporary meanings embedded in their visual and material characteristics.

Antonio Sánchez-Gómez is a Colombian-born researcher and lecturer on design history. He is a recent graduate of BGC.