 | Dioramas such as this one, which were created for the Yale Peabody Museum's acclaimed Machu Picchu display will become part of an international traveling exhibition co-sponsored by Peru and Yale. |
Yale and Peruvian officials have reached a framework for an agreement that
represents a new model of cooperation providing for collaborative research
of cultural and natural treasures.
T H I S
Yale, Peru forge ‘model’
collaboration on Machu Picchu
The artifacts in question were excavated from Machu Picchu, a 15th-century Incan
city located on a mountaintop in Peru, by Yale scholar Hiram Bingham III in the
early 1900s. They have remained part of the University’s collections since
that time, and some have been on display at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural
History.
Yale and Peru will create a collaboration that will reach beyond the artifacts
of Machu Picchu to include the natural environment at the archaeological site.
After a one-year preparatory period, Yale and Peru will jointly launch an international
traveling exhibit for which the Peru will lend 40 objects. The new exhibit will
also use dioramas and multi-media interactive materials created by the Peabody
Museum for its recent acclaimed exhibit, “Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery
of the Incas.” Richard Burger, the Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology
at Yale, and co-curator with Lucy Salazar of the previous exhibit, will be curator
of the joint exhibition.
Following the exhibition’s tour, most of the museum-quality, whole artifacts
currently at Yale will be installed in a new museum and research center in Cuzco,
Peru, which will be built by the Peruvian government to meet security and technical
specifications provided by Yale. The University will be an adviser to the museum.
The museum and research center will open by the end of 2010, or possibly earlier,
in time for the centennial celebration of Bingham’s rediscovery of Machu
Picchu. Approximately 380 museum-quality objects will be transferred to the new
museum, except for a small number which will remain at the Peabody for display.
Yale will also transfer to the museum and research center a portion of archeological
materials from among the several thousand pottery and stone fragments, bones
and other objects not of museum quality. These will include those materials,
such as certain bones, which have already been well studied and for which Yale
has no future research plans. Fragments such as ceramic shards that Yale may
have future plans to study will remain at Yale. University researchers will have
access to study material transferred to Peru, and Peruvian researchers will have
access to material to remain at Yale.
The agreement, once finalized, will acknowledge Peru’s title to all of
the archaeological artifacts excavated at Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham now at
the University. Simultaneously, Peru will grant Yale full rights to possess and
use to facilitate vital research and to study and display the materials. Those
rights will allow material from the collection to stay at Yale for a term of
99 years, except for the museum quality and research materials that Yale commits
to transfer to Peru to be placed in the museum following the exhibit and readying
of the facility.
Yale will fund a program for an initial period of three years for an scholarly
exchange program that will bring Peruvian scholars and researchers to campus,
and send Yale scholars to Peru for study and research.
The “Memorandum of Understanding” between Yale and Peru was reached
last week, after a visit to Yale by a Government delegation led by Peruvian Housing
Minister Henan Garrido-Lecca, and the second of two intensive negotiating sessions.
Yale’s negotiating team was led by Vice President and General Counsel Dorothy
K. Robinson.
“This understanding represents a new model of scholarship and stewardship,” said
President Richard C. Levin. “Furthermore, the educational and research
programs that will be jointly undertaken by Yale and Peru are expected to greatly
expand our understanding of this fascinating archaeological treasure.”
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