Public Programs @ the Institute
Series: Pre-Columbian Society of New York
Lisa Trever, Columbia University
Pulling at the Thread of Pañamarca’s Hall of the Moche Imaginary
Monday, November 3, 2025, 6:00 pm
The ancient Moche center of Pañamarca was a place of extraordinary artistic creativity during the second half of the first millennium CE. Located on the monumental frontier of the southern Moche world, in the lower Nepeña Valley of Peru’s north coast, the makers of Pañamarca’s vibrant painted architecture demonstrated deft fluency with the Moche canon as well as a freedom to bend its rules in novel ways. This presentation narrates ongoing work that is revealing—through the meticulous combination of archaeology, conservation, traditional illustration, and digital imaging—an unprecedented pillared hall, recently named the Hall of the Moche Imaginary, where painters elaborated an entire cosmos of more-than-human beings alongside images of worldly encounters and activities.
Lisa Trever is the Lisa and Bernard Selz Associate Professor in Pre-Columbian Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University in the City of New York. Her books include Image Encounters: Moche Murals and Archaeo Art History (University of Texas Press, 2022), The Archaeology of Mural Painting at Pañamarca, Peru (Dumbarton Oaks, 2017), and the co-edited volume El arte antes de la historia: Para una historia del arte andino antiguo (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2020).
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