Laura Filloy Nadal finds it easier to explain the world if you have an object in front. But saying “the world” is inaccurate because it is not one and there have been many; Perhaps the word “America” or rather “the Americas” can contain them. Filloy Nadal, 58 -year -old Mexican, is an archaeologist, curator and restorative. Since 2022 he works in the curatorship of the wing Michael C. Rockefeller, of the, which contains the collection of ancient American art and reopens on May 31, 2025, after a closure of four years and deep changes.
The Michael C. Rockefeller wing, which was inaugurated in 1982, collects more than 1,800 pieces from the villages of the year 3000 AC to the present. Until 2021 the area of America was almost intact. The story that linked to the pieces expired and stopped answering the questions of a present that did not cease to change, because the discoveries and the advance of knowledge about the art of ancient America were, mostly, after its inauguration.
Turn America 180 degrees
Filloy Nadal walks with the country days before the reopening of, an area of 4,000 square meters loaded with white paint and morning light. She and the curator Joanne Pillsbury have been responsible for findings, data, and knowledge that they apply in a story and a truthful map.
The direction of the route is important and, therefore, turning the map in 180 degrees – which has been made on the main screen of the room – is necessary. America is lying down, and looks much better. Nothing above nothing. The map is so powerful that it is necessary to say it and ask why. “It is part of the speech … You can see the world from the position that you want to see it and that is precisely what allows us to understand,” says Filloy Nadal.
The animated map represents the movement of the first settlers. On the screen, the arrows do not go from north to south, but from left to right, it is transformed according to social and political systems —fronteras, kingdoms, countries – agreed in the history of human decisions, almost all mediated by force and tragedy.
On the other hand, everything that is in the room says something of how humans migrate and have always migrated; And how this America, which is not one, is due to that human movement. “It is a place where we can look at ourselves.”
“We are seeing how different cultures are emerging and we will understand that they communicated, that there were interactions that we did not understand before, for example, on the coasts: between Ecuador and the West of Mexico. And we see how the borders have been retraying or increasing over time and are borders, say, policies, but that have to do with the distribution of the peoples. Many times the same culture exceeds the current border. The twentieth century, the movement is conversely, which is nourishing what is the cultural mosaic of, for example, the United States or New York, because our goal is also always returning to this land, which is New York, where 27% of the population is Latin, ”explains Filloy Nadal.
But long before New York existed Teotihuacán. And there begins the journey of the room. “There were people who lived there and who came from all the extremes of Mesoamerica. Merchants, artisans, people who also migrated and also carried their customs. Teotihuacán was that multi -ethnic and multicultural city that is now New York today.”
Filloy Nadal knows the questions in advance and has a clear speech. He has chosen one that builds a story that resembles a chair about ancient art in America.
“This is a piece that I think speaks a lot of globality, of that cultural exchange that has always existed. It is very interesting because it is a leung to the 16th century, a piece of ceramics. A lebrillo is a vessel that the Arabs used and that was very common in Spain. The interesting thing about this piece is that it was done in the city of Puebla, in Mexico. But if you look at the colors and in the motifs, it is not like the color. Talk about that influence that the East of China had in Mexico.
Migration, Metallurgy and Commerce
Thus begins to answer the most important question in the Chamber: What do these objects reveal about the movements and relations between the peoples of the Americas and the world? Each specific case contributes to the narrative.
The Chiriquí piece, in Panama, for example. Why would a curator put a piece of chiriquí in the Mayan world? The piece was made by an artist Chiriquí. But someone from the region who is Panama today (probably), who considered that this was a valuable object, took it to Yucatan and left it in Chichen Itzá, which at that time was a pilgrimage place already where offerings were taken. “Then, you have to imagine these life stories: someone who walks to carry this object or that this object passes into hand, so that it reaches a sacred place, which is very different from the place where it originated,” says Laura.
The curator walks and points out that it has now passed to the area of Costa Rica, where there are pieces of carved jade without tremor in the hands. Olmecs, Mexica, Teotihuacanos and Maya walked kilometers to look for them on the Motagua River, in the current Guatemala. Meanwhile, the populations of southern Costa Rica, close to the river, ignored them. They looked south. They were interested in technology and gold work, which in South America began two thousand years before the rest of the continent. “The beautiful thing about this Gold of Met collection is that it is a synoptic collection. There are pieces that are of different cultures and temporalities. Perhaps museums in countries of origin have large gold collections, but not from the other places.”
The collection also puts in parallel to the two empires that coexisted at the time of the arrival of Spain, the Mexicans and the Incas, and their technological knowledge. “This domain of techniques that took much longer to dominate, for example, mixtures and alloys between metals, is impressive at the level of metallurgy innovation.”
On a screen an owl appears – a shield made in gold – the same one that is exposed in the showcase, but in the image there is no corrosion and is in motion: the wings move. “You have to imagine that the opponent, when he was in confrontation, saw as if the owl came over him. And thanks also to these digital tools we can explain a little how these objects were seen in the past, because it was glowing. And also how it was used.”
Textiles are worth more than gold
While gold has had a higher value among metals, Filloy Nadal remembers that talking about values, meanings and materials, in the pre -Hispanic world, textiles had much more value than gold.
The textile area is in semi -gloom, but the dyes of each object have their own light. This space is absolutely novel, fundamentally because New York has consecrated itself as a pioneering city in the industry. Since its inception, the MET has created a kind of unprecedented fabric library.
A room wall is fully covered with panels with more than 250,000 feathers of macaw, blue and yellow. But Filloy Nadal also has information that nobody usually wonders: “The people of this museum in collaboration with other institutions have made a series of stable isotope studies to know what the birds ate. It was found that some ate strawberries, and those were free macaws, but others were fed with corn. And corn only lives with man. Then, we now know that they were having birds in captivity or semi -authorship.”
There are also two unkus exhibited. The Unku is a red, white and black thread shirt with chess print. The manufacturing could have required more than a thousand hours and it is such a mastery that its reverse is exactly the same as of its forehead. “It is very interesting because the chroniclers described how some members of the Emperor’s court were dressed in this type of alternate black and white tables.”
The unku is also an answer to that general question that moves the thread of this story: “Returning to that theme of the borders, this type of shirts has been found in Peru, in Argentina, in Chile and in Bolivia. That is, what is the extension of the old Tahuantinsuyo, – name that the Incas gave their empire,” says Laura.
The conclusion of the route is basic: migrating is something we have always done, migrating is something we will not stop doing. And thanks to this there is change, evolution and creation. “One migrates for your own story. And you leave many things behind, but you also bring with you many others. Where you get, impact and transform. And that is something that must be affected.” After finishing the tour, there is the feeling that migrating and being in New York is like continuing this story.
