The Musee du Quai Branly's Pre-Columbian Collections: History and Insights into Contemporary Displays by Paz Nunez-Regueiro, Curator Americas Section

This meeting will be held at the Charles Sumner School, 17th & M Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C.

The meeting starts with refreshments at 6:45 pm and the lecture begins at 7:15 pm.  

The Musée du Quaily Branly in Paris opened in June 2006, with the mission to ensure the enhancement of the French national collections pertaining to Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas and to promote the dialogue between cultures. The Musée holds over 106,000 objects from the New World, inherited from the former Musée de l’Homme. The archaeological material, which accounts for 70% of the collection, was gathered mainly in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The holdings are mostly from Mesoamerica and the Andean region. Its collection is mainly a result of exploration by French adventurers, travelers, and people living abroad and, more rarely, from scientific expeditions. The complete history of these intricate networks of collections and exchanges is still to be written.

Paz Núñez-Regueiro joined the Musée du Quai Branly in 2005, as a curator in the Americas Section, to oversee the reinstallation of the American collection in a newly constructed building near the Eiffel Tower. In the past 11 years, she has participated in numerous research projects and symposia on Andean material culture and museum studies, with a particular interest in Patagonian collections. Her most recent project has been an exhibition on the Conquest of Peru, The Inca and the Conquistador (2015). She is presently benefiting from a Summer Fellowship at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.