Maria Fernanda Boza Cuadros

MARIA FERNANDA BOZA CUADROS (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, was awarded a grant in April 2022 to aid research on “Beyond Forgeries: Peruvian Neo-antiquities and their Transnational Trajectories, 19th-20th centuries.” This project explores the biographies and transnational trajectories of so-called inauthentic objects manufactured in Peru in the nineteenth century, and that are now housed in European ethnographic museums. In the context of this research, terms such as fake or forgery muddle the nuanced and sensitive entanglements of the study sample. Thus, the term “neo-antiquities” is adopted given its ability to signal the positioning of these objects in the art market of their era, and their recent manufacture date. Over 700 neo-antiquities have been identified in 33 museums in thirteen European countries based on in-situ research, historical inventories and photographs, and online catalogs. The project facilitated the in-situ examination of neo-antiquities in nine German museums, and documentation housed in four archives in Germany and France. Results thus far signal to a consistent corpus of objects manufactured in metal and clay, which were collected in Peru both as presumed authentic and as “replicas”. Currently, the existence of two workshops that manufactured 50% of the examined neo-antiquities can be ascertained, one in the north coast and one in the central coast of Peru. The existence of at least two more in these regions is currently hypothesized.