Exhibition Introduction with Getty Museum Director Timothy Potts
Transcript
Male Narrator: Welcome to Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas, a collaboration between the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
[rhythmic drums and rattles evoking period and mood]
This exhibition guides you through more than two millennia and across a distance of some 3,000 miles. It follows the progress of goldworking from its beginnings in South America’s Andes mountains northward through Central America and Mesoamerica. Perhaps the first of many surprises along the way is that often, Ancient American cultures did not value gold above other materials.
[music ends]
Director of the Getty Museum Timothy Potts:
Timothy Potts: Really, it’s the other way around. For many of these cultures, their featherwork, their shells, jadework, these other materials had deep ideological and ritual meaning to them. And the metalwork, as you go in further north into Mexico, there’s much less of it, and what they did have was not as central to the way they understood the world and their lives within the cosmos.
Male Narrator: This first gallery presents an array of such precious objects. Alongside gold are textiles, ceramics, turquoise, and shells. The arresting wall hangings at the far end of the gallery are fragile macaw feather panels that, astonishingly, have survived for more than a thousand years.
[rhythmic drums and rattles evoking period and mood]
As you explore the exhibition, you’ll discover these and other spectacular works, from royal courts, complex civilizations, and little-known cultures of the Ancient Americas. What’s more, you’ll learn about the crucial role played by trade.
[music ends]
Timothy Potts: What’s especially new about this exhibition is understanding how the dynamics of influence and interconnection within these cultures was much more complicated than has been appreciated in the past.
Male Narrator: Timothy Potts will be one of your guides on this tour, along with Kim Richter, Senior Research Specialist at the Getty Research Institute and Joanne Pillsbury and James Doyle, curators of Ancient American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.