Museal Fact and Representation of the Past: The Peruvian and Ecuadorian Experience in the Historical American Exhibition at Madrid in 1892

Abstract

This article analyses the staging of the national showcases of Peru and Ecuador during the Exposición Histórico-Americana in Madrid in 1892. Our interest is to explore the ways in which the past was represented through the combination of the pre-Columbian objects and the museographical displays that told the story of the Spanish conquest and colonization. Through the analysis of devices such as Lorenzo Roselló’s sculpture set, a representation made for the Peruvian delegation, or the wooden sculpture of the “wild” Indian and a historical model of the Ecuadorian delegation’s monument, we reveal the ways in which the artifacts of the past were used in the construction of a pan-Hispanic, masculine and colonial gaze that shaped a sense of the past of historical subjects, as well as their absences. In short, this proposal attempts to delineate a view of these phenomena in the Andean region and to investigate the historical density of these exhibition experiences in the construction of national stories in a transatlantic key.