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Review of The Floating World: Masterpieces of Edo Japan at The Blanton Museum of Art

The Floating World: Masterpieces of Edo Japan from the Worcester Art Museum, Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin,

Over one hundred ink-and-paper survivors from “the floating world” of Edo-period Japan are on display at the Blanton Museum in Austin, Texas. This diverse collection of woodblock prints, many of them strikingly colorful despite the passage of two centuries or more, debuted on February 11, 2024, and will close on June 30, 2024. Like spring’s short-lived cherry blossoms, these ukiyo-e masterpieces will not appear in public again for a long while and never in quite the same splendid arrangement. On the drizzly April day, I viewed them, the exhibit space was especially crowded, as eclipse-watchers who’d traveled to Austin for the celestial event rounded out their trips with a weatherproof indoor spectacle. A woodblock print exhibit may not be quite as rare as a Texas eclipse, but it’s rare enough that you don’t want to miss it.

Katsushika Hokusai, Fuji at Gotenyama, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, 1830–32, color woodblock print, 17 1/8 x 23 1/8 x 1 in., Worcester Art Museum, John Chandler Bancroft Collection, courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art

The Japanese phrase ukiyo-e translates to “pictures of the floating world,” a reference to the almost otherworldly pleasures of Edo (now Tokyo) during the relatively peaceful, prosperous, and cosmopolitan 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. It was peaceful because the Tokugawa clan, the last shogunal dynasty, had emerged victorious in the great battles for supremacy that took place at the end of the sixteenth century. It was prosperous because the shogun required Japan’s many regional lords to make biannual pilgrimages to Edo, ensuring steady business for the city’s merchants. It was cosmopolitan because, despite severe restrictions on foreign trade, ideas from the other side of the world trickled through to the capital and influenced its now-iconic artwork in ways this exhibit makes clear. Most suggestively, Edo “floated” through its golden age because of its courtesans, actors, athletes, festivals, fireworks, gardens, bridges, temples, and breathtaking vistas, both natural and man-made, all of which remain alive for us thanks to the detailed, dreamlike output of the era’s woodblock print masters.

The Blanton’s well-annotated trip through the floating world plays out in five thematic sections, though there is some inevitable overlap between them. The first and smallest, Origins, introduces the time, place, and, critically, the technique of woodblock printing. A final ukiyo-e print was the work of about four people: a designer, a carver, a printer, and a publisher. To illustrate their craftsmanship, Texas artist Daryl Howard offers an introductory display – a work of art in its own right – that breaks down the process. First, each layer of the image is carved into a wood block (backward from how it will appear on paper). Next, colorful ink is brushed onto the wood blocks. The paper is then pressed onto the blocks, one after another, resulting in a layered, multicolored final image.

*The Floating World: Masterpieces of Edo Japan from the Worcester Art Museum*, Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, February 11–June 30, 2024, *courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art*

Over time, ukiyo-e artists increased the number of layers and colors. The colors themselves changed over time, as when a new and longer-lasting chemical formula for “Prussian blue” arrived in Japan via Dutch sailors. Some woodblock artists were keen to experiment with foreign techniques like one-point perspective. As the Edo era approached its violent end, prints sometimes depicted foreign gunboats flying foreign flags with foreign crews. Yet, for the most part, both the style and the content of ukiyo-e prints remained decidedly local.

The second part of the exhibit, Entertainment, shows the many ways the people of Edo amused themselves. Prints depict frolics under spring cherry blossoms, summer fireworks, autumn foliage, and winter snow. In one large triptych, people go pleasure boating under a landmark Edo footbridge. It also seems strikingly familiar. As curator Holly Borham points out, scenes like this happen almost daily a few blocks south of the Blanton on Austin’s Ladybird Lake. There are also prints detailing the military prowess of the samurai caste, but with the absence of battles under Tokugawa rule, martial pomp takes on a playful quality. Warriors throw themselves into a fray against a wild boar, they practice archery for sport, and children reenact military parades. Right alongside elite samurai, and seemingly even more celebrated and coveted, are prints of famous kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers. “Candid” illustrations of entertainers’ private lives, as they relax at home with family, seem to prefigure a later century’s magazine spreads.

*Katsushika Hokusai, A Hawk in Flight, circa 1840, color woodblock print, 17 1/8 x 23 1/8 x 1 in., Worcester Art Museum, Gift from the estate of John Chandler Bancroft*, *courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art*

Part three of the exhibit, Poetic Pictures, shows one of the social functions of ukiyo-e as a platform for celebrating ideas. While woodblock prints were first and foremost decorative objects, some of them contain substantial text. Poetry clubs and other groups of literati could commission prints to commemorate their contests and events. Occasionally, the Japanese language’s complex kanji characters are accompanied by furigana, simpler characters to aid pronunciation, but the majority of prints assume a high degree of literacy on the part of their audience. This fact alone speaks volumes about the social world of Edo, as peace and prosperity facilitated education for men and women alike. Don’t worry if your archaic Japanese is rusty – the exhibit’s explanatory panels are generous and in plain English.

As the first three parts of the exhibit show, contemporary earthly pleasure is a far more common subject in ukiyo-e than religion, history, or myth, but the Blanton also spotlights some of the movement’s most interesting counter-programming. The famous artist Utamaro found himself in prison after violating the shogun’s prohibition against depicting the 16th-century warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had a complex relationship with the Tokugawa family that deposed his son. Gods, monsters, demon-slayers, and ghosts also appear occasionally, though in keeping with the recreational spirit of the era, several of these are actually depictions of stage plays about the supernatural. Playful monkeys, brash roosters, and fearsome dragons also rear their heads, sometimes in reference to the zodiac but often as supporting players in anthropocentric scenes.

The fourth section, Landscapes and the Natural World, contains some of the best-loved examples of the ukiyo-e art form. Here you can soak in several large, vivid pieces from two legendary printmakers whose work has inspired generations of designers, travelers, and Japan lovers: Hokusai, creator of the 36 Views of Mt. Fuji series, and Hiroshige, the artist behind the 100 Famous Views of Edo series. The Blanton exhibit boasts examples from each series, and all on their own, they justify fighting Austin traffic.

Utagawa Kunisada I, Woman Holding a Paper Lantern, 1844, color woodblock print, 38 5/8 x 19 5/8 x 1 1/4 in., Worcester Art Museum, John Chandler Bancroft Collection, Courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art

The final part of the exhibit, Bijin-ga, shifts the focus to Edo’s “fashionable beauties.” Geisha, bathers, and hostesses don their makeup or remove their robes, chat with each other or gaze into mirrors, and relax outside their workplaces or take seaside strolls. A close look at their kimono reveals stunningly intricate patterns. Their possessions and surroundings hint at Edo’s vast marketplaces and vibrant consumer culture, and at the goods and services that were coveted and accessible in Japan’s booming capital. One of my favorite surprises was a rare print by Hokusai in the shape of a folding fan. Since it was meant to attach to a fan and would have become heavily creased through regular use, few examples survive.

This temporary exhibit has drawn admirers from across the UT community, including art students, textile makers, and students of Japanese language and history. This is the Blanton’s first Japan-focused exhibit in many years, and when it finishes its run, the prints will return to their permanent home at the Worcester Museum in Massachusetts. To preserve their color, the prints can only go on display for a few months at a stretch and only three times in a 10-year period. To see so many in one place and so well-arranged and annotated is a singular experience. Look in on the floating world while it lasts.

David A. Conrad received his Ph.D. from UT Austin in 2016 and published his first book, Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan, in 2022. He is currently working on a second book, which will also focus on postwar Japan. David lived in Japan’s Miyagi prefecture for three years and can’t wait to go back to his home away from home.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of The Devil’s Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee by Stewart Lee Allen (1999)

Inspired by a never-finished ceremonial cup of coffee in Ethiopia and a Jules Michelet quote attributing the Enlightenment to the advent of coffee, author Stewart Lee Allen dives head-first into a voyage across the world to trace the path coffee took out of Africa. In The Devil’s Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee, Allen weaves the history of coffee in between his eccentric tales of travel. A self-proclaimed “addict” himself, Allen argues that the coffee bean’s integration into our daily lives has been central to the flourishing of human civilization, from intellectual innovations in the Arabic world to the political revolutions of the West.

Allen focuses on the role of coffee in culture, politics, spirituality, and trade. Coffee’s link to spirituality is explored throughout the first half of the book. The journey begins in Harrar, Ethiopia, where it is believed that the cultivation of the aromatic Coffea Arabica species began. Allen attends a traditional ritual from the Oromo tribe – an exorcism in which coffee beans are roasted, chewed, and then brewed to release the power of the priest. In what follows, Allen attempts to visit the alleged home of al-Shadhili in al-Makkha (Yemen), the Muslim idol who is rumored to have invented brewing coffee beans for drinking in 1200 C.E. Allen stresses how a group of traveling Islamic orders called Sufis incorporated coffee into their spiritual practices and contributed to its spread beyond North Africa. In Turkey, Allen traces the roots of contemporary coffee consumption habits and takes the story up to coffee’s introduction to Europe.

A depiction of a late eighteenth-century Ottoman coffeehouse in Istanbul.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Allen’s primary argument rests upon the social and historical impact of the coffee shop to prove his thesis. Previously centered around drinking in taverns, European society lacked a common space for sober socialization. A drunk mass, consuming beer as though it was water, led to a less efficient, intellectual, and healthy population. Coffeehouses became multi-functional public spaces that facilitated a multitude of historical moments. They were the original meeting spots of choice for business powerhouses like Lloyd’s of London and the East India Company. As well, these cafés served as spaces for intellectual dialogue, where scientists like Isaac Newton or philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau were known to frequent. Allen even states that in being a site for political organizing, the cafés of Paris were central to the French Revolution. As he himself admits, some of Allen’s claims are bold. For example, he suggests that this stimulant pushed the Ottoman empire to success, created Great Britain’s drive for dominance, contributed to Napoleon’s fall, and even helped the Sons of Liberty attain independence from the British.

*A coffee vendor in Paris during the 18th century. Source: Wikimedia Commons.*

After Allen’s long discussion of Europe, we find the author distracted from his “history of the world according to coffee” and focusing more on storytelling. He continues his narration of Gabriel De Clieu’s fabled introduction of the coffee bean to the New World until he arrives in Brazil. The focus here is on the link between coffee and the horrors of Brazilian slavery. In wondering if the slave trade brought with it coffee’s spiritual origins in the Zar cults of eastern Africa, he finds himself participating in an Afro-Brazilian ritual where coffee beans are left as an offering to summon a spirit named Preto Velho.

The final stretch of the author’s trek takes him to the United States. Following Route 66, Allen seeks the quintessential cup of coffee, i.e., a foul but “soulful” cup of drip, ever flowing thanks to the attentiveness of a kind all-American waitress. After finding himself at the mercy of several Tennessee cops and countless stops at roadside chain restaurants and diners, he heads home to Los Angeles. The book fades out in ephedrine and caffeine-induced haze, where the author gives his final ruminations on the substance: “…Each age had used the bean according to its understanding of reality…We citizens of the brave new world, who worship efficiency and speed, are just turning it into a high, another way to go a little faster, get there a bit quicker and feel a little better. Only there’s nowhere left to go” (p. 223).

Xpresso Drive Thru Cafe, Denver, Colorado.
Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by John Margolies, call number LC-MA05- 7312

Allen’s book is fast-paced, entertaining, and easy to read. But this assessment comes with significant reservations. While there is certainly truth to many of these claims, I suspect that the author has overstated the role of coffee. Some of his work seemed to shade into fiction, a problem for a book that claims to be factual. There was a minimal inclusion of dates and citations, which made it more difficult for me to take what he was saying seriously. The timeline felt fuzzy, and occasionally, facts seemed poorly researched. For example, Allen argues that coffee’s 13^th-century arrival in al-Makkha not only aided the intellectual advancements of the Islamic world but allowed their civilization to “flourish beyond all others”. Many historians consider the Islamic Golden Age to have occurred from the 8^th to the 13^th centuries.[1] Coffee reached this region during a period of decline for some of these older empires, and the flourishing of the Ottoman Empire that Allen points to was yet to come for a couple of centuries.[2]

The book often reads more like a travelogue than historical literature. Many of his side discussions felt aimless, almost like reading someone’s inner monologue. Allen’s sardonic tone was humorous at times but occasionally felt obnoxious. His characterization of some of the Middle Eastern and Indian people he met during his journey seemed to evoke Orientalist tropes. The author’s insensitivity may be attributed to the age of the book, which is now twenty-five years old, but it makes the work feel dated. Some descriptions were deeply problematic, for instance, Allen’s description of India: “Most people do not associate India with coffee. Disorganized, dirty, undereducated, lazy, muddled, poor, and run-down – not to mention superstitious – it is clearly a nation of tea drinkers” (p. 76).

book cover for "the devil's cup: a history of the world according to coffee."

Despite these criticisms, The Devil’s Cup is an interesting and accessible read for those looking to learn more about the origins of one of the world’s most beloved beverages. The sections focused on presenting historical information and analysis were well-written and drew my attention. There were a handful of lines that struck me for their beauty. Allen knows how to paint a scene, and his colorful descriptions of coffee often made me crave a cup. Here’s just one example: “It proved to be the first all-American joe we’d found – black, tarry, and powerful, rich with half-and-half, cascading in waves from the waitress’ Pyrex coffeepot and into our mugs, breaking over us, washing through our veins like rocket fuel. It was awful and terrifying beyond compare” (p. 220). While the book has flaws, Allen’s story remains a unique, light-hearted whirlwind of a read. And if you love coffee, The Devil’s Cup will likely make you cherish your morning cup even more.

Alexandra Tipps is a senior in the College of Liberal Arts, currently working toward her B.A. in History and Sociology. She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in History with a focus on modern Latin America.

[1] Steve Tamari, 2009. “Between the ‘Golden Age’ and the Renaissance: Islamic Higher Education in Eighteenth-Century Damascus.” In Trajectories of Education in the Islamic World, edited by Osama Abi-Mershed (Routledge: 2009): 36

[2] Şahin, Kaya. Empire and Power in the Reign of Süleyman: Narrating the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman World / Kaya Şahin, Indiana University (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 7-8

The Public Archive: The Paperwork of Slavery

Millions of tweets and millions of state documents. Intimate oral histories and international radio addresses. Ancient pottery and yesterday’s memes. Historians have access to this immense store of online material for doing research, but what else can we do with it? In Spring 2018, graduate students in the Public and Digital History Seminar at UT Austin experimented with ways to make interesting archival materials available and useful to the public; to anyone with access to a computer. Over the Summer, Not Even Past will feature each of these individual projects.

Slave passes were an early form of racialized surveillance, small pieces of paper with the power to decide where black men and women could travel, who they could meet, and whether they might be subject to violence. Digitized by Galia Sims, The documents in “Guards and Pickets: Paperwork of Slavery” provide a glimpse into the paperwork created to control the movement and relationships of the enslaved, like passes, jail fees, marriage certificates, patrol invoices.

More on Sims’ project and The Public Archive here.

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The Price for Their Pound of Flesh by Daina Ramey Berry
Missing Signatures: The Archives at First Glance by Alina Scott
The Illegal Slave Trade in Texas, 1808-1865 by Maria Hammack

The Public Archive: Sicilian-American Puppetry

Megan McQuaid’s digital project, titled “Animating Italian Immigration: Sicilian-American Puppetry”, sheds light on the vibrant world of Sicilian puppet theater, or opera dei pupi, in Italian-American immigrant communities through digitized newspaper clippings, posters, programs, and photographs of marionettes.

More on McQuaid’s project and The Public Archive here.

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Yael Schacher discusses “A View From the Bridge” (Directed by Sidney Lumet, 1962)
New Digital Technologies Bring Ancient Roman Villa to Life by John Clarke
Domesticating Ethnic Foods and Becoming American by Madeline Hsu

The Public Archive: Woven Into History

Alina Scott‘s project, titled Woven into History, is a digitized collection of nineteenth and twentieth-century Navajo rugs currently on exhibit at the Blanton Museum of Art. In addition to photographs of the rugs themselves, Woven into History also provides a brief history of the Navajo and lesson plans to contextualize the collection and provide a platform for respectful collaboration and discussion.

More on Scott’s project and the Public Archive here.

Also by Alina Scott on Not Even Past:

Cynthia Attaquin and a Wampanoag Network of Petitioners
Missing Signatures: The Archives at First Glance

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A Historian’s Gaze: Women, Law, and the Colonial Archives in Singapore by Sandy Chang
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Colonial Chalices: Colonial Latin America Through Objects (No. 4)

Chalice (Cáliz) Mexico City, 1575-1578 (via LACMA)

This series features five online museum exhibits created by undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin for a class titled “Colonial Latin America Through Objects.” The class assumes that Latin America was never a continent onto itself. The course also insists that objects document the nature of historical change in ways written archives alone cannot.

Lillian Michel’s exhibit focuses on colonial chalices, one of the most sacred objects of the Eucharist. Unlike many other colonial objects that incorporated indigenous techniques and materials, silversmiths charged with the production of chalices were strictly regulated. There was little room for the incorporation of indigenous materials, let alone indigenous religious sensibilities. Chalices therefore can better document the arrival of new European styles in art and architecture than changes in indigenous traditions.

More from the Colonial Latin America Through Objects series:

Of Merchants and Nature by Diana Heredia López
Nanban Art by John Monsour
Andean Tapestry by Irene Smith

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Abisai Pérez Zamarripa reviews Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Mexico and the Andes
Brittany Erwin walks us through the National Museum of Anthropology in San Salvador
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra reviews Jerónimo Antonio Gil and the Idea of the Spanish Enlightenment

Nanban Art: Colonial Latin America Through Objects (No. 2)

(via Wikimedia Commons)

John Monsour’s exhibit on Nanban screenfolds exemplify the deep connections of the colonial Americas to early-modern Japan. Portuguese Jesuits and merchants arrived in southern Japan in the mid-sixteenth century with commodities from India, Europe, and the Americas and with hundreds of Luso-Africans. The foreigners were called “Nanban” (barbarians from the south). The Jesuits gained a foothold with Japanese lords that led to the massive conversions of commoners and nobles. Jesuits and Japanese artisan established workshops that produced many Nanban objects, including screenfolds documenting new European cosmographies. The maps also document the introduction of Chinese-Korean maps. Monsour’s exhibit shows the maps on Edo workshops led by Jesuit and the new cosmographies they engendered.

More from the Colonial Latin America Through Objects series:

Of Merchants and Nature by Diana Heredia López

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Brittany Erwin reviews The Archaeology and History of Colonial Mexico by Enrique Rodriguez Alegría
Acapulco-Manila: the Galleon, Asia, and Latin America, 1565-1815 by Kristie Flannery
Purchasing Whiteness: Race and Status in Colonial Latin America by Ann Twinam

The Archaeology and History of Colonial Mexico by Enrique Rodríguez Alegría (2016)

In this study of the social significance of material culture in Mexico City and Xaltocan in the early colonial period, Rodriguez Alegría uses a variety of sources, including archaeological evidence relating to food consumption, catalogues of ceramic sherds from several dig sites in these cities, and wills, stock lists, and auction records. His use of archaeological data and historical records together reveals the benefits of incorporating disparate kinds of evidence: the archaeological data on food and material consumption filled in the blanks of historical records, which often leave out explicit descriptions of such daily practices.

The works of historians and anthropologists frequently overlap in theme and subject, however, the two disciplines gather and use evidence differently. Rodríguez Alegría argues that such differences should not stand in the way of interdisciplinary investigations. His main contribution is a discussion of the ways scholars conceptualize their methodologies. He asserts that in an interdisciplinary study, there should not be a contest over which kind of evidence is more worthwhile. Rather, researchers should pay careful attention to the implications of the interpretative strategies they use.

Part of what makes his methodology innovative is his acceptance of the inherent incommensurability of archaeological and historical evidence. He outlines common interpretative strategies used in each of these disciplines, openly acknowledging the differences between them. For archaeologists, analogical reasoning is common because it allows them to utilize “known behaviors in the present” in order to shed light on “unknown behaviors [of] the past.” Historians, on the other hand, tend to conceptualize evidence from their documents as synecdoches, “where qualities or practices found in a document or a few documents are replicated to stand for wider processes or patterns in a society.”

In his openness to the contradictions that result from simultaneously using these distinct methods, Rodríguez Alegría creates a provocative rejection of the established practice of seeking an uncontested line of reasoning. He asserts that the incorporation of more evidence fundamentally creates a more nuanced understanding, even if all the pieces do not come together to neatly form a single image. As a result, both the synecdoche favored by historians and the analogy used in anthropology have their place in a single work.

Rodríguez Alegría provides numerous examples of the benefits of interdisciplinarity, including his illustration of how quantitative and qualitative analysis of pottery fragments combine with historical data on markets and production methods to reveal new understanding of of the role of pottery in these cultures. In that sense, the writing and presentation style achieves the important goal of encouraging cross-disciplinary understanding.

The most compelling aspect of this work is the author’s insistence that scholars redirect their attention towards a more critical analysis of how they interpret their evidence. Forcing this awareness about discipline-determined approaches to data analysis promises new insights, but it also presents potential problems. At some point, scholars have to assert a coherent narrative, or at least a conceptual image, of the phenomenon under investigation. That process inherently requires a selection of relevant information. If scholars choose to incorporate apparently contradictory data collected outside of their discipline, they could face criticism for knowingly promoting an argument that goes against some of the data. It is possible that the scholarly community as a whole would resist this approach because of the widely ingrained attachment to uncontested narratives that Rodríguez Alegría criticizes.

This work prompts an important reexamination of disciplinary divisions and approaches to the interpretation of evidence. It fundamentally brings the question of what makes a document representative of a larger phenomenon to the forefront of historical analysis. Furthermore, it encourages scholars to think about how their investigation engages with contextual information from unwritten sources. Overall, Rodríguez Alegría’s book opens up an important discussion on the value of questioning the validity of even the most standardized interpretive strategies. As he points out, establishing a narrative is fundamental for historians because of its apparent utility in illustrating change over time. It is also, however, a method that reflects our aesthetic preference for presenting information this way. Both historians and anthropologists must, therefore, aim to break down barriers that would prevent the fruitful sharing of methodologies between disciplines.

Also by Brittany Erwin on Not Even Past:

The Museo Regional de Oriente in San Miguel, El Salvador
The National Museum of Anthropology in in San Salvador

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Haley Schroer reviews Infrastructures of Race: Concentration and Biopolitics in Colonial Mexico by Daniel Nemser (2017)
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Of Merchants and Nature: Colonial Latin America Through Objects (No. 1)

(via Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana)

This new series features five online museum exhibits created by undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin for a class titled “Colonial Latin America Through Objects.” The class assumes that Latin America was never a continent onto itself. The course also insists that objects document the nature of historical change in ways written archives alone cannot.

Diana Heredia López’s exhibit centers on the Florentine Codex, a twelve volume encyclopedia of Aztec knowledge compiled by Franciscan friars and dozens of Nahua scribes trained in the mid sixteenth century in in Latin and classical learning. These polyglot Indians surveyed the natural history of central Mexico using Pliny’s model. The latter described objects along the ways they were processed, consumed, and transformed. She focuses on Nahua agave, cotton, figs, and gourds and the fabrics and containers they engendered.

The Museo Regional de Oriente in San Miguel, El Salvador

By Brittany T. Erwin

In the tiny nation of El Salvador, the West dominates. As a result of commercial and political relationships that developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there has been significant influence in this Central American country from the United States and Western Europe. However, within the Salvadoran context, the predominance of western history and culture refers to the marked differences between the eastern and western regions of the country, and the east often gets the short end of the stick. One institution born in 1994 pushed back against this enduring stigma by celebrating the difference of the east.

In the west of this mountainous and volcano-ridden country lies the capital city of San Salvador. Founded in 1524, this sprawling metropolis is home to busy streets and extensive networks of both interregional and international exchange. Far away from that hustle and bustle, and at the foot of the frequently active Chaparrastique Volcano, lies San Miguel. This city, the third-largest in the nation is the proprietor of the first museum built in the eastern half of the country.

Museo Regional de Oriente (Brittany Erwin, 2017)

Housed in a former textile factory and one-time military complex, the Regional Museum of the East (Museo Regional de Oriente) tells the story of the east through the multidisciplinary lenses of archaeology, ethnography, and history. Under the direction of Saúl Cerritos, this institution promotes a celebration of the distinct history and heritage of the East. Even without capital-city resources, it tells the important stories of indigenous life in the pre-hispanic era, the complexities of sociocultural interactions during centuries of conquest and immigration, and the resulting diffusion of cultural practices that continues today.

The collections begin with a display of ceramic artifacts whose particular motifs and production techniques place them firmly outside the Mayan influence that permeates western El Salvador. Extensive historical context in Spanish and English accompanies these carefully preserved pieces, dating from the Paleo-Indian period through the post-Classical period, which ends around the time of Spanish contact.

The exhibitions then shift to reflect the living culture of the zona oriental. Displays of artisanal products and pottery with both a modern presence and historical roots reveal the enduring influence of indigenous culture. The final permanent exhibition hall showcases the dozens of local festivals that guide public life in the city and throughout the east. From the elaborate costumes they inspire to the coordinated offerings and ritualized dances that they require, these fiestas reveal an important aspect of local identity. On that note of energetic cultural pride, the tour concludes.

Inside the Museo Regional de Oriente (Brittany Erwin, 2017)

The museum also houses two temporary exhibits, which change several times a year to reflect contemporary issues of historical interest and investigation. Currently on display are a photographic history of the railroads that connected the people and markets of the East until the early 2000s and an exhibit reflecting on the nation’s anniversary of peace after the civil wars of 1980-1992.

This modest museum, constructed in the shadows of its influential western rival leaves a strong impression. Through a careful selection of local artifacts and the presentation of a region-centered dialogue, it encapsulates both the history and culture of the proudly idiosyncratic eastern region of El Salvador.

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