Monday 18 February 2013

New member of VERVE team gets to task with masks

This week, an update from our newest member of the team!

Hi, I’m Sian, the VERVE project Curatorial Assistant. I have been working at the Pitt Rivers Museum in the Collections department for 6 years, cataloguing everything from amulets to spinning wheels. I am lucky that every day I work with different objects that have different stories and I am looking forward to uncovering even more of the Museum’s amazing collections during the course of the project.

So, what have I been up to so far? This week I have been cataloguing Mexican and Guatemalan secular dance masks. 'Cataloguing' is a museum term that covers several procedures to ensure we have all the details we ned about any given object. So it involves photographing and measuring the object, adding a detailed description to our database, and noting the object’s condition. Some of masks are very striking - they have piercing painted glass eyes and realistic looking teeth made from recycled porcelain sherds.

PRM 1951.11.17

Some dance masks were made to represent cultural stereotypes or figures from colonial history. The mask below is said to represent Pedro de Alvarado, a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala in the 1530s.

PRM 1951.11.13

Sian




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