About this Event
This is an in-person event and will not be live-streamed or recorded.
The European world changed after 1492 with the gradual discovery of a New world (New World or new world) and almost immediate extraction of its metals, gems, pearls, plants, and animals. The discovery of the immensely endowed mountain called Potosí impoverished a people while it enriched another, to such a degree that it caused global inflation while participating in the Andean demographic collapse. This almost unimaginable wealth for Europeans caused a place that at an altitude 13,343 ft was once scarcely uninhabited (inhabited) before 1545 to become the largest city in America by 1600. This talk will dwell on the real and imaginative transformation of wealth as revealed in part by Potosí’s silver in its myriad forms carried aboard a ship bound for Spain but sunk by a hurricane in 1622.
Thomas B. F. Cummins is Director of Dumbarton Oaks and the Dumbarton Oaks Professor of the History of Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University. He is the author, editor, or coeditor of ten books, the latest of which is , coedited with Steve Koisiba and John Janusek and published by Dumbarton Oaks in 2020. Cummins served as the Director of the University of Chicago Center for Latin American Studies, the Interim Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, the Chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture, and Member of the Comisión Sectorial del Sistema Nacional de Museos, Perú. A member of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America at the Museum of Modern Art and editor in chief of the Grove Encyclopedia of Latin American Art (Oxford University Press). He received La Orden “Al Mérito por Servicios Distinguidos” En el Grado de Gran Cruz from the Republic of Peru, the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize from the Modern Language Association, and the Bryce Wood Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association. Professor Cummins is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Depiction of Cerro Rico in Potosí from Martín de Murúa, Historia del origen, y genealogía real de los reyes incas del Piru, 1590, fol. 141v. Private collection of Seán Galvin.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
1700 Wisconsin Ave NW, 1700 Wisconsin Avenue Northwest, Washington, United States
USD 0.00
