Highest Heaven

The glorious saints and archangels in this gallery were made in the Americas but far from the United States. Elvin A. Duerst’s gift of works from the Spanish viceregal or colonial period in Central and South America from 1521 until the revolutions led by Simon Bolivar liberated these areas from Spanish control in 1821. Oregon-born and educated Duerst was an American foreign aid worker who spent years in Central and South America where he assembled much of his collection. This art represents a tradition rarely present in US museums but familiar to millions from Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico. The violent conquest of the Americas by Iberian powers, beginning in the sixteenth century, did not displace the peoples of the Incan and Aztec empires. Artists and artisans applied their advanced skills to the new religion of Christianity, producing an iconography and style completely new and reflective of their ancient cultures. The Duerst gift is shown here along with other examples of Ibero-American art of that period, as well as examples of pre-contact works in ceramic, textiles.