Volume in Tribute to Dr. Pasztory -- Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas: Contemporary Perspectives

Esther Pasztory, the Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor in Pre-Columbian Art History, retired in the spring of 2013 after more than forty years of service with Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology. In May of that year, a one-day symposium was held in the department in honor of her career. Organized by Francesco Pellizzi (Co-Chair of the University Seminar on the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas and Senior Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University) with the assistance of Andrew Finegold (PhD, 2012) and Ellen Hoobler (PhD, 2011), several of Prof. Pasztory’s former colleagues and students presented scholarly papers and reminisced about the importance of her influence both on the field as a whole and in their individual outlooks. Some of these talks, along with other contributions that were solicited from her former students, were then collected in a volume published by the University of Oklahoma Press: Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas: Contemporary Perspectives, the front matter and preface of which can be found below. Because this volume was limited to scholarly papers on Ancient American topics, several contributions that were primarily personal reflections, reminiscences, or that dealt with topics beyond this spatio-temporal limit were not able to be included. Out of a desire to make them available to a wider audience, they are presented here as PDFs in what is intended as an online addendum or supplement to the printed book.

The editors would like to thank the Department of Art History and Archaeology and the Media Center for Art History at Columbia University for agreeing to host this material and for helping to facilitate its realization. We are grateful to all the contributors for their enthusiasm and patience throughout the completion of this project.