Andrea Vázquez de Arthur

Education

BFA, Rhode Island School of Design
MA, MPhil, PhD, Columbia University

 

Biography

Dr. Andrea Vázquez de Arthur joined the faculty of the History of Art department at FIT in 2022. She teaches courses on the visual arts of the Indigenous Americas, including North America and pre-Hispanic Latin America. Her research focuses on the diverse archaeological cultures of the ancient Andes in South America, primarily from the Middle Horizon and the Late Intermediate Period. Through studies of comparative analysis, her work investigates systems of visual language, Indigenous ontologies, and gender representation in the visual culture of various societies including Moche, Wari, Lambayeque, and Chimú.

Dr. Vázquez de Arthur has presented her research at the College Art Association, the Society for American Archaeology, and the Pre-Columbian Society of New York, among others. Before coming to FIT, Dr. Vázquez de Arthur was the Leigh and Mary Carter Director’s Research Fellow at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she curated the exhibition Fashioning Identity: Mola Textiles of Panamá, highlighting the work of modern Indigenous Central American women.

Selected Publications 

Exhibition review of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map, Whitney Museum of American Art, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 9, no. 2 (Fall 2023)

Fashioning Identity: Mola Textiles of Panamá. Exhibition booklet. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2020. 

“Semiotic Portraits: Expressions of Communal Identity in Wari Faceneck Vessels.”
In Social Skins of the Head: Body Beliefs and Ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica and the Andes, edited by Vera Tiesler and María Cecilia Lozada. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2018.

Courses

• HA 112 History of European Art and Civilization: Renaissance to the Modern Era
• HA 116 Indigenous Art of North America
• HA 118 Introduction to Fashion History: Materials, Motifs, and Meanings
• HA 224 Mesoamerican Art and Civilization
• HA 242 Andean Art and Civilization
• MP 461 Senior Seminar: Museum Exhibition