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.
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
Comments
Archived as published.