Amara Solari

  • Professor of Art History and Anthropology
  • Latin American Art and Architectural History

206 Borland

Amara Solari

Biography

My research focuses on the processes of, and the inevitable inequities produced by, cultural, visual, and theological interchange between Indigenous groups of Mesoamerica and Spanish settler-colonists of New Spain. Centered on material and visual culture, I have written multiple articles, several co-authored books, and three monographs, which span the precontact and early colonial periods. Employing an interdisciplinary approach dependent on art historical, ethnohistorical, and technical methods, I investigate a wide variety of material including architecture, urban design, cartographic documents, religious statuary, and most recently wall paintings and the pigments used to produce them.

My most recent book involves a collaboration with a team of scholars in the United States, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. Conceived as both a co-authored scholarly book, Maya Christian Murals of Early Modern Yucatán (2024, The University of Texas Press, cowritten with Linda K. Williams, and recipient of a subvention grant from The Wyeth Foundation for American Art) and an interactive website, this project investigates the murals painted by Maya artists in the first two centuries of Catholic evangelism. In August 2019, I was awarded a four-year Collaborative Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support this research; I served as the project’s lead primary investigator. The project is deeply engaged with the “material turn” of the humanities as my team has conducted multiple forms of scientific analysis, including X-Ray Diffraction and Scanning Electron Microscopy, to illuminate pigment composition and modes of mural execution.

I am currently writing my next monograph, Missions Impossible: The Art of Franciscan Failure and Puebloan Perseverance in Nuevo México, which examines the ways Indigenous art and architecture were co-opted by various colonial actors in the American Southwest during Catholic evangelical campaigns prior to the 1648 Pueblo Revolt. For this research I was awarded a yearlong fellowship as the Samuel M. Kress Fellow at the National Gallery of Art and a John H. Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and am thus on research leave 2023–2025.

At Penn State I have been privileged to teach a wide variety of courses that span expansive stretches of time and geography. At the survey level, I teach Art History 140: Mayas, Aztecs, Incas, which analyzes the artistic and architectural production of these Amerindian societies. My upper level undergraduate courses and graduate seminars are more focused, and take up topics such as early modern Mexico, religion in colonial New Spain, and the intersection of collecting practices and imperialism in the modern age. The ongoing mentorship of undergraduate and graduate students is a highlight of my academic career.

Collected Works