Eric Mazariegos Jr.

Eric is a specialist in Pre-Columbian art and architecture, and at Columbia, he is writing the first art history dissertation on Tairona metallurgy. The Tairona, as they have come to be known through a colonial Spanish source, were a conglomerate of nearly state-level societies that inhabited the Caribbean coast of what is today northern Colombia between approximately 1000-1500 CE. Excelling in a wide array of artistic media and architecture, the Tairona have not yet garnered any significant scholarly attention (art historical or otherwise), especially when compared to their imperial Aztec (Mexica/Nahua) and Inka contemporaries in Mesoamerica and the South American Andes, respectively. Primarily drawing on Tairona artworks held in major art institutions across Latin America, the United States, and Europe, his dissertation argues that Tairona metallurgists valued instability and volatility in their aesthetics and material choices, evidenced by dizzying, swirling forms and the utilization of copper-laden, corrosion-prone tumbaga (a metallic alloy). Having completed a master’s thesis on contemporary photography and Chicanx muralism, Eric is also committed to the research and teaching of Latinx art, as well as the modern and contemporary reception of Pre-Columbian art, broadly construed. 

Eric holds graduate degrees in art history from Columbia, and an undergraduate degree in art history from UCLA (Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude). His doctoral research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Columbia University Office of the Provost, among others. At UCLA, Eric was a Mellon-Mays undergraduate fellow and University of California Regents Scholar.