Скачать или смотреть Curatorial View of El Árbol de la Muerte: Maquilando Mujeres

Matthew Robb recalls first encountering El Árbol de la Muerte: Maquilando Mujeres while exploring the Fowler’s collection. As a specialist in ancient Mexican art, he was struck by the sculpture’s vibrant, unusual form and its placement alongside West Mexican ceramics. Recognizing elements from the Tree of Life tradition, Robb found the piece both familiar and surprising, ultimately seeing it as a powerful statement on history, gender, and tradition.

Matthew H. Robb is the Mesoamerican Specialist at the Library of Congress. He is an expert in the history of art and architecture at Teotihuacan, as well as in the history of collecting pre-Columbian art in the 19th and 20th centuries. He has lectured and written on a broad range of topics related to the Indigenous arts of the Western Hemisphere.

The Vital Matters platform offers an opportunity to explore perspectives from individuals across various professions and backgrounds as they interpret specific works. From religious and spiritual practitioners to curators, art historians, activists, community organizers, journalists, lawyers, and others, we invite you to engage with a broad spectrum of insights.

At the core of this project lies a commitment to people- and object-centered storytelling. Instead of focusing solely on dates and doctrines to explain belief systems, we aim to cultivate deeper understanding through passionate narratives rooted in lived experiences. Traditional museum interpretation—whether in galleries or online—often relies on anonymous narratives authored by curators and scholars, leading to homogenized viewpoints.

Our goal is to expand these interpretations by offering diverse perspectives, even when they conflict, while prioritizing the voices of knowledge bearers from the communities and traditions where these works originated and hold meaning.

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