Lost and Found at Sea, or a Shipwreck’s Art History

Authors

Aaron M. Hyman, Johns Hopkins University
Dana Leibsohn, Smith CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 2021

Publication Title

West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture

Abstract

To be lost and found at sea: What kinds of thinking does the shipwreck prompt? This essay pursues this question by centering fragmented remains—large beeswax blocks and Chinese porcelain ware—from the Santo Cristo de Burgos, a Spanish galleon lost while traveling from Manila to Acapulco at the end of the seventeenth century. By considering how durable commodities were recovered and reimagined, primarily by Indigenous inhabi­tants of the Oregon coast, this essay reflects upon the kinds of histories that can be written around and because of wrecked ships. Tacking between past and present, we use the Santo Cristo de Burgos to draw out the lineaments of a shipwreck’s art history, bringing into focus three interrelated themes, each critical to the material histories of wrecks: the interpretive recalcitrance of cargo, the reframing of value through recovery, and the production of material surplus in the watery depths.

Volume

28

Issue

1

First Page

43

Last Page

74

DOI

doi.org/10.1086/718016

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Rights

© Copyright 2021 by The Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. All rights reserved.

Comments

Archived as published.

Recommended Citation

Hyman, Aaron M. and Leibsohn, Dana, "Lost and Found at Sea, or a Shipwreck’s Art History" (2021). Art: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/art_facpubs/29