Analyzing Forgotten Histories: Ximena Gómez Shares Insights at Pizza and Prof

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Photos by Robert Skinner

Students, faculty, and staff gathered in the Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall on Thursday, November 17, 2022, to share pizza and listen to Ximena Gómez, assistant professor of American Art in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Massachusetts. She presented her Pizza and Prof talk titled ‘Art History Without Art? Identifying Black and Indigenous Artistic Contributions.’

Gómez specializes in the art and visual culture of colonial South America and that of the early modern transatlantic world more broadly. Her research focuses on the roles Indigenous and Black people played in artistic and religious expression in colonial Lima, Peru.

She is currently at work on her first book, which examines the visual culture of confraternities (religious community groups) in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Lima. In addition to highlighting the agency of Lima’s Indigenous and Black confraternity members, this book will be the first monographic treatment of confraternal art in the viceregal Peruvian capital.

After a brief introduction by Elena Carbone, associate dean for curriculum and academic oversight and professor of Nutrition, Gómez began the event by asking the audience questions: “What do you think of when you hear art history? What is talked about in art history? What do art historians look like? What is art?”

Gómez explained that traditional conceptualizations of art history and art historians are predominantly European, wealthy, and elite. What comes to mind in this framework are the works of Italian artists like Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo. While these works are important, there are other works commissioned by Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people during the same time period that are often overlooked.

Gómez continued by sharing historical context relevant to Peru during the colonial period. She said that the original capital of Peru during the precolonial period was Cusco, a remote city in the Andean mountains. When the Spanish colonized Peru, the capital was moved to the newly established Lima, known as ‘Ciudad de los Reyes’ or City of Kings, because it was on the coast and easier for the Spanish to control.

Due to Spanish colonial influence, most of the predominant art from this period in Lima had Catholic connotations by necessity, as both the colonial viceroy and Spanish Inquisition were dominant in the capital.

Beginning with historic paintings of Lima during the colonial period, she pointed out Black and Indigenous people present in these images to emphasize the diverse mix of cultures in the city during this time (for example, the 1680 painting above titled Plaza maior de Lima cabeza de los Reinos de el Perú). Gómez further explained that due to many factors, like colonial cultural hegemony, frequent earthquakes, and usage of degradable materials, there is a scarce amount of physical art to examine from Black and Indigenous confraternities.

Then she talked about proving the existence of art in colonial Black and Indigenous communities using archival evidence like inventory lists, symbolic textiles, and oral histories. Two examples of surviving art from these communities are two alternative devotions of the ‘Virgin of the Antigua’ and the ‘Virgin of the Copacabana’ (examples are visible in the slide above).

There was a lively question and answer after the talk, and the event was well received by both students and staff. “It was nice to learn from an Indigenous perspective of art and learn about different cultures,” one student said.