yale, machu picchu, and the peruvian government's law suit

An interesting story. MM and I saw the exhibit last week. Interesting, though it portrayed native people over edenically, and (for the most part) the European Christians as bloodthirsty war criminals. The Incas were talented pot makers.


NEW HAVEN, Jan. 26 — By any conventional measure, Yale's exhibition about Machu Picchu would seem a windfall for Peru. As one of the most ambitious shows about the Inca ever presented in the United States, drawing over a million visitors while traveling to half a dozen cities and back again, it has riveted eyes on Peru's leading tourist attraction.

Yet instead of cementing an international partnership, the exhibition, which returned to the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale in September, has brought a low ebb in the university's relations with Peru. At issue are a large group of artifacts that form the core of the show, excavated at Machu Picchu in a historic dig by a Yale explorer in 1912. The government of Peru wants all of those objects back.

Read the whole thing here. And hide any Peruvian antiquities you've got lying around your house.