UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Amara Solari, professor of art history and anthropology, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for an ambitious, cross-disciplinary research project to explore how artistic production served as a mode of resistance for Puebloan communities during the Catholic evangelical campaigns of the 17th century.
As part of the Guggenheim’s 2024 class, Solari joins a distinguished and diverse group from 52 disciplines empowered by the Guggenheim Foundation’s mission since 1925 to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.”
“To be on this list is humbling,” Solari said. “The Guggenheim is a career-making award that exceeds disciplinary boundaries, recognizing the work of artists, scholars, and creators alike. It is a wonderful honor that recognizes our past accomplishments while validating the scholarly potential of our future projects.”
Solari’s work on the project began in the summer of 2023 shortly after she finished her third monograph, a book that explored murals painted by Maya Christian artists in the Yucatán peninsula between 1550 and 1700, which paired art history with cutting-edge materials science.
Solari’s Guggenheim-supported project stays in the same time period and asks similar questions, but moves northward to the wall paintings, architectural complexes and religious imagery created in the American southwest by Pueblo artists.
The new book, “Missions Impossible: The Art of Franciscan Failure and Puebloan Perseverance in Nuevo México,” seeks to understand the complex roles artistic production played in the theological exchanges underpinning interactions between indigenous people and settler-colonists.
European colonization and its mission system in the American southwest, unlike the region of her previous studies, catalyzed a region-wide indigenous uprising in 1680, now known as “the Pueblo Revolt.”
“While well-studied from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, I recognized quickly during my initial readings on this historical moment that there is this massive hole in the story,” Solari said. “Anthropologists, archaeologists and linguists have deeply researched the time period, but art historians have largely left it untouched.”
There is an obvious reason for this, Solari explained. During the Pueblo Revolt, dozens of mission structures — and the artworks they housed — were intentionally destroyed, leaving an absence of visual material available for art historical study. Early 20th-century excavations, however, unearthed the charred remains of religious murals, statuary, and altarpieces, whose samples have been stored in museum repositories for more than 100 years without being materially analyzed.
Through access to archival sources, archeological repositories, archival field notes and drawings, and the excavated samples, Solari’s project will focus on approximately seven 17th-century Franciscan missions in the Santa Fe, New Mexico, area.
During the Guggenheim Fellowship, Solari will work with Maureen Feineman, associate research professor in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State, to conduct materials characterization of the samples to determine the chemical composition of the mural’s pigments.
Doing so will allow Solari and Feineman to trace the component ingredients to their mines of origin, to recover information about networks of trade, and to compare Christian practices to the sacred paintings of the pre-contact period.
Crucial to this project is the collaborative participation of the contemporary pueblos whose ancestors built and decorated these historically problematic structures. Solari is currently consulting with tribal councils, the National Park Service, and various state agencies to ensure her research is ethically grounded and meaningful for the involved communities.
B. Stephen Carpenter II, the Michael J. and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Dean in the College of Arts and Architecture, said Solari’s interdisciplinary research pushes the bounds of art historical scholarship and elevates the Department of Art History at Penn State.
“Amara is a game-changing and boundary-crossing art historian. Her collaborative approach to research inspires the imagination,” Carpenter said. “The Guggenheim Fellowship is well-deserved and demonstrates the national and international value of Amara’s research. The College of Arts and Architecture will watch with pride as she embarks on the next steps of her ongoing and important art historical journey.”