Art of the Americas

Before the Carlos Museum closed in March due to COVID-19-related safety concerns, museum staff prepared and installed a number of baskets in the Native North Americas gallery as part of an annual rotation to limit light exposure for especially vulnerable objects.

Guna women artists are inspired by the natural world in which they live, a paradise of hundreds of small islands surrounded by turquoise waters known as the “San Blas” islands. The northern coast of mainland Panama adds a long strip of verdant land to Guna Yala, or Gunaland. These two areas include a remarkable array of land and water animal and plant life, much of which is reflected in the imagery of their artwork. We've created a puzzle from an image of a dulemola that depicts a spiny lobster.

When the Spanish colonized the region, missionaries required that Guna women adopt European standards of modesty by wearing blouses. The women responded by creating an entirely new type of blouse that combined the gathered sleeves and yokes of European blouses with colorful “cut-work” panels forming the fronts and backs. We've created a puzzle from a dulemola created from the "grandmother pattern." Though made in this century, its geometric design is deeply traditional.

Dulemola, commonly known as a mola, can be understood as artistic testaments to resiliency and adaptation. Created by Guna women on the northern coast of Panama, these colorful cutwork pieces embody both tradition and innovation.

A purple slip began to appear on Panamanian pottery of the Coclé region around 500 AD. The coloration of this slip is unusual because most purple slips in the Americas are more maroon.

Emory University student Rebecca Levitan and Georgia State University student Arden Davis worked with consulting conservator of textiles Patricia Ewer to bathe fragments of an Andean doublecloth textile.