Adrian Locke, curator of Aztec's exhibition in conversation with Arara

Wivenhoe 30.03.2003

Cristiana Bertazoni Martins: First of all, I would like to ask you, how would you explain the great success of the exhibition?

Adrian Locke: Well, I think that we view it on a number of different levels. The first is that Aztecs is a subject that people are familiar with, to some degree or other, and - in England at least - something that they have some knowledge of, a subject that people have studied in school. People who have studied history have some recollection of the 'Great Conquest' and I think that it would have captured people's imagination. It was a culture that they knew a little bit about, and they wanted to come and see for themselves what it was all about. And undoubtedly, they were attracted by the idea that the Aztecs were a very bloody and supposedly brutal society - they wanted to come and see all the blood and guts .. But the other thing is that it was very well received by the press, had very positive response by the press. Everyone was urging people to come and see it, and I think that had an impact also.

CBM: I remember that at the beginning of the exhibition it seemed that many people were only interested in the 'human sacrifice' aspect of the Aztecs. Do you think that after the exhibition, people have a deeper understanding of Aztec society?

AL: I think that they will. Inevitably, if people are interested in human sacrifice they will go looking for objects that relate to different types of sacrificial practice. I think that they will also see that a lot of the rituals relating to Aztec gods are quite bloodthirsty and unpleasant. But on the other hand it gives people a the possibility of seeing lots of different objects, many of which - the majority of which in fact - are not related to human sacrifice in any shape or form. They can assess the Aztecs from a different perspective perhaps, one that shows that there is a lot more to it than human sacrifice. And I think that the other aspect is that people are able to see that there is some sort of life after the arrival of the Spanish - that was a very important aspect of the exhibition.

CBM: In which other ways do you think that the exhibition worked against stereotypes of pre-Columbian societies?

AL: I think that one of the things that people have been very surprised by is the fact that the Aztecs had books, that they had a system of writing. As soon as people associate a culture with a literature or literate forms, it changes their opinion of that culture completely. They begin to see them as a much more sophisticated form of society than previously thought. So I think that that has been a very strong point of the exhibition: the ability to bring these documents to the exhibition and to allow people to see that they had a means of recording information, not just simple information, but quite often extremely complex concepts of time and space.

CBM: I have a very simple question about the name of the exhibition. Why the name Aztecs, why not Mexicas?

AL: There is a very straightforward answer, Mexica does not mean anything to people in England; although it is the term favoured in Mexico, and widely used in Spain, in England it would mean very little. Aztecs has a much stronger presence, so we used it - in agreement with the Mexicans themselves - we preferred to use Aztecs as a title.

CBM: This point brings me on to another question - how did you balance the commercial demands of a major exhibition, and remain faithful to the cultural context of the works?

AL: It is a very difficult one to balance. From a purely financial point of view an exhibition is designed to cover its costs, it is not designed to lose money, although not every exhibition will also make money. In terms of the way the exhibit was displayed in a sense we did place an artificial construct over the objects, creating themes, different galleries in which different works could be placed. You could argue that any one work could probably go in any of the galleries, that we could move them around quite freely. But it wasn't an arbitrary grouping, it was simply a necessary way of dividing the works up. Most people would tend to think of such an exhibition chronologically, from the Olmec, to the Maya, to the Mexica: as a transition. But with the Aztecs it is virtually impossible to do that, their art spans about 200 years and it is very difficult to definitively age most of the objects, so we decided not to use a chronological approach. One thing that we wanted to do was to give people the opportunity to be able to see the works in the round, because quite often they are decorated on the back, and people tend not to see that when they are exhibited in museums. We wanted to give people a sense of the completeness of the works. I think the theme system worked quite well. Other people have asked why we didn't have an exhibit on the way that they practised gardening or the way that they created objects themselves: tools, workshops, that kind of thing. I think that the Royal Academy is fundamentally an art-based institution, one that is not going to have the ethnographic type of exhibition that is more the remit of the British Museum. We felt that the catalogue would provide information that an exhibition cannot possibly cover, and we also did not want to overwhelm the visitor with lots of text or images on the walls, we wanted to keep everything quite clear.

Isobel Whitelegg: Quite visual?

AL: Very visual, yes. I'm not sure if that answers your original question.

CBM: I have another comment that might be linked with it. We know that the objects shown in the exhibition had very specific functions within Aztec society, and that they were not seen as purely artistic objects, as they are presented in the exhibition.

AL: Yes, we are taking objects, functional objects or symbolic objects, and we are making them into works of art. That is a Western imposition, absolutely. And that is something that we were aware of, it is something that we have done, but it was intended to be an exhibition of the art of the Aztecs, a way of looking at the Aztecs through their art. So we have de-contextualised material. That is why we do not have the more domestic articles.

IW: I would say that is something that happens pretty generally, as a consequence of what our understanding of art is today. After all with pre- or early Renaissance art, you are often taking an altarpiece out of its original context and putting in a museum as art.

AL: Yes. We debated the merits of having more imagery, of using images from the codices to illustrate the uses of a sculpture or of vessels. And we decided that it was going to be too much for people to take in at once, too much material. We really wanted to keep it a very sober environment.

IW: Returning to the subject of people in England having a very limited knowledge of the Aztecs, and beyond that, ancient American civilisations in general, how successful do you think that the exhibition has been in confronting that shortcoming, has it helped to overcome it?

AL: I think in general we have, in a large part we have been successful, but it is very difficult to fathom the depths of perception that people really have, or the way in which they already think of the Aztec, or any Mexican civilisation. People think of the Aztec as very bloodthirsty, but of the Maya as very peaceful group, that lived in harmony in the jungle. But of course we now know that the Maya were even more bloodthirsty, and almost in a constant state of warfare with one another. It is very difficult to know, but one way of being sure is that we have had a huge response from schools, masses of children and school groups coming - which has been fantastic. And this will have an impact as they go through life, they will remember the exhibition and the objects and it may encourage them in the future to travel to Mexico, to go and see for themselves. I remember as a child going to see Tutankhamun - that is an exhibition that everyone talks about as having an incredible impact, huge, unbelievable visitor numbers. I think Aztecs has gone some way - I wouldn't compare it to Tutankhamun because that was a phenomenon - but Aztecs has done a lot. Nearly fifty percent of the people who have come to see the exhibition are first time visitors to the Royal Academy which is an absolutely phenomenal statistic, showing that the Royal Academy can do this type of exhibition, and do it well. I think that is important, and the exhibition has raised the profile of the Aztecs whether in the right way or the wrong way.

IW: And for 'specialists' in ancient civilisations, who previously have not taken an interest in the Americas, do you think that their interest has been shifted? Do you think that they will be more receptive to making more equal comparisons?

AL: I think that people will look at them comparatively but that they will still end up thinking of Egypt or Greece as far superior: the inevitable reaction. It is just so ingrained in our culture to look at it that way. Probably even in Mexico, people are schooled in classical antiquity. That is one of the reasons why we wanted the Virtual Reality at the beginning - to get people away from the idea of an Egyptian pyramid, to show that an Aztec or a Mexican pyramid is something completely different, the environment is different. I think that we were reasonably successful in doing that actually.

CBM: And you can make comparisons in the other direction, compare what people in general see as the supposed 'brutality' of the Aztecs with their contemporaries in Europe for example.

AL: Well yes, medieval Europe was not a particularly nice place to be: disease, great social inequality. If you look at the Aztecs in comparison, they were actually pretty sophisticated, and the Europeans could not fathom or understand what they had seen, and reacted accordingly. Also, the iconography of Christianity, the martyrdom of the saints for example, is extraordinarily brutal.

CBM: And do you feel that the Royal Academy has changed its position regarding showing this type of exhibition, looking at pre-Columbian societies?

AL: There was a great degree of concern in the beginning that the exhibition would not bring people through the turnstiles. So its success has helped in that respect. Whether anybody would want to do an exhibition of that scale again, I don't know. It was very expensive, and that is always a concern. But hopefully, it has opened the doors for other exhibitions, in main London galleries and museums. I hope so.

CBM: And now the exhibition is travelling through Europe?

AL: It is going to Berlin and Bonn. I think that it will be a very good exhibition in Berlin. They have put quite a few extra works in, quite a few objects that have not been able to travel. I think that it will be slightly larger than ours, although the variety might not be quite as strong, not as many books for example.

IW: And the events relating to contemporary Mexico that have taken place in London - were they absolutely connected with the Aztecs exhibition, planned as part of the programme?

AL: That was the initiative of the Mexican embassy. Because the exhibition was going to be so large and so important, that they wanted to have cultural events running alongside.

IW: So do you think that will happen in Europe as well?

AL: Berlin had a Mexican festival earlier last year, so they will not repeat that, unfortunately - I think that those aspects are good. We had Mexican food in the restaurant, music in the Friend's room, I think that has been a good thing also.

CBM: For the benefit of people reading who didn't have the chance to see the exhibition, or read the catalogue. I think it would be good if you could tell us about the planning of the exhibition, how it all started.

AL: It has quite a long history. We had a roving Mexican ambassador who came to the Royal Academy about seven years before the exhibition, six years before it opened. He asked if the Royal Academy wanted to have an exhibition of Mexican or Pre-Columbian culture. A group of people from the Royal Academy, including Norman Rosenthal, who is the exhibitions secretary, and Tom Phillips who is a Royal Academician and also Chairman of the Exhibitions Committee, went to Mexico. The exhibition that they were offered initially was actually called Gods of Ancient Mexico, and was on at the time in Mexico City. I think that they decided that they wanted to focus on one culture, and were drawn to the Aztec, and in particular that momentous occasion when the New World and the Old World collided, and the great fusion that came out of that. The Maya had been the subject of a big exhibition in Italy, at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice - which was also shown in Mexico - and there were two large Olmec exhibitions in Washington DC and Princeton. The great culture that really hadn't been looked at, it seemed to them, were the Aztecs. We worked in conjunction with the Mexican authorities to make it happen.

CBM: Do you think that the political change in Mexico helped?

AL: Yes. I think that the election of President Fox, Vicente Fox, helped. He wanted to raise the profile of Mexico globally, and of course using culture is a very good way of doing that. Secondly, Felipe Solís, one of the curators of the exhibition, was promoted to Director of the National Museum. He wanted this exhibition to happen and he was the one who promised a large group of works - I think 160 of the works are from his museum alone - so that was the core that allowed us to build up the show, and to approach all the other lenders.

CBM: How did you manage to put together such an enormous quantity of objects, most of them never before shown in a conjunct way?

AL: Once we had the central core of objects from Mexico - the National Museum of Anthropology, and from the Temple Mayor museum - we had a very strong exhibition in its own right, we had about 200 objects. I think that other lenders could recognise the potential scale of it, that it was going to be major exhibition. Essentially, institutions want to be part of such exhibitions, to lend their support but not only that - a major exhibition also promotes their own institution and shows the wealth of their own collections. Strangely enough, the more objects you get, the more people become convinced that they should participate. One of the most gratifying things is that people who have come from institutions who have not been involved have also been very impressed by the scale of the show and the way it has been exhibited. Richard Townsend, who is a very important scholar of the Americas, was overwhelming in his praise for the exhibition and that was very gratifying, because he knows the subject so well, and has produced his own exhibitions. That kind of independent assessment is very welcome.

CBM: And how do you think that your involvement with the University of Essex, researching for your PhD here, amongst other activities, prepared you for working on the exhibition?

AL: Certainly my time at Essex helped enormously. I think that the broader one's experience is, the better. I think all those things factor in: teaching, working on exhibitions, Arara, etc. Those things help because you are using skills that you do not use in your day-to-day research or writing. Obviously the ability to research is extremely important in this kind of job, where your are on your own, having to look up works and find out information about them, going through libraries, approaching museums. Another important aspect is the reputation of the art history department at Essex, its association with Latin American art.

CBM: I was very curious about the last part of the exhibition, where you show Colonial art mixed with Aztec art: objects from the contact period. What exactly did you want to demonstrate in this last part of the show?

AL: The first thing that we needed to do was to make sure that the exhibition had an uplifting finish. The focus of the exhibition was really the Temple Mayor, the works that have come out of Mexico City and the temple itself. The largest gallery in the Royal Academy was given over to that. One thing you have to try to do, when you have played your trump card, is to make sure that people do not feel deflated by the objects that they see afterwards. That is one of the reasons why we had that wonderful room with the turquoise and the feather-work. But when I first arrived at the Royal Academy the proposed last room was to be concerned with Conquest and there were suggestions about some of the objects - for example a portrait of Cortez, a Toledan steel sword - and I thought that that was inappropriate, I thought that we should not reinforce the idea that the Aztecs were a defeated people, that they simply disappeared and that the Europeans took over. I knew that there was this body of art, which is not actually that easy to get hold of -very beautiful and rare objects - and I thought that we should talk up that fact that the Aztecs were there, that they were amalgamated into a new society, that they were the ones who did a lot of the building, the work that was demanded of them by the new colonial rulers. And I thought that it was important to give people the idea that they were there, that they continued to be there, and not only that but they contributed something that it is completely unique to Mexico. Those few objects that we have revealed that in a much stronger way than perpetuating the idea of disintegration, and destruction. And I thought that the image of disintegration was inappropriate for 21st century Mexico too. I think that the Mexico we know today comes from an amalgamation of two societies and what came out of it, like much of the Americas I suppose. It is wrong to ignore that. It is good to put forward the indigenous side I think.

CBM: At almost the end of the Exhibition's run, would you like to change anything about it, would you like to have done anything in a different way?

AL: No I don't think so. Probably, if we could go back, we would reduce the size of the exhibition. We would take some works out because we have had some problems with circulation, because the exhibition has been more successful, more popular than we anticipated. So we might review that, but essentially I would not want to change it.

CBM: Do you have any idea what was the most successful part of the show, the part that the general public were most interested in?

AL: The Virtual Reality has been very popular - people have enjoyed that. But strangely enough the last room has been something that people have commented on very positively, they have been intrigued by that kind of mixture, and the skill of the adaptation of the indigenous population.

CBM: I found that the last part of the exhibition was interesting because you could almost imagine another exhibition continuing from that point.

AL: In an ideal world it would be great to do a huge exhibition like at the Metropolitan Museum in New York - Mexico of Thirty Centuries - which is essentially what they did, brought it through all the way to the modern day. An incredibly large trajectory to cover.

IW: It seems constructive to have an open ending, to suggest to people, or perhaps to students and researchers at every level, that there is something to be explored.

AL: And in actual fact it is totally logical - because the beginning of the exhibition is all about how the Aztecs came along and borrowed, appropriated, from other people and eventually they succumbed to the same fate. It works well in that respect.

IW: How do you feel the general press reaction has been, do you find that people have said thoughtful things about the exhibition?

AL: By and large, the focus has been on blood rights and sacrifice. And I think that that is largely down to the fact that this is a culture that people do not know that well. So they focus on the aspects that they feel they can talk about with some authority. And they do sensationalise it. And in a way that helps us, and in a way that hinders us. Almost all the critics raised these issues. And a lot of them are factually incorrect. You are interviewed, you talk about all the different dimensions of the Aztecs and eventually the article comes out and it is all about the one thing. But I suppose that is more palatable because everyone has said, they may be bloody, they may be nasty but .. do go and see the exhibition.

CBM: There is a polemic article written by Cauthemoc Medina and published on the on-line journal Reforma. What do you think about his comments?

AL: Cauthemoc's article in Reforma: Eduardo Matos wrote a response, which I think is also available on-line in Reforma. I think that Cauthemoc's argument was that it is time we stop looking at pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico, and judging Mexico from their pre-Columbian past. The Aztec, the Olmec, the Maya they are a fundamental part of Mexico's culture, its heritage, its identity. They have helped to formulate the culture of the country as it is today. Of course there are artists, writers, authors alike who want to move way from that and there are others who go back to that. We look at Chicano art in America and there are those - the Aztlan movement for example - who look back to the great roots of Mexico and want to associate themselves with that aspect, they see it as part of a continuum. And I think that that is a perfectly valid position for them to have. I would say that I would not want art of Mexico to always be associated with the pre-Columbian past but I don't think that it is. I think that it is up to institutions and individuals alike to promote that understanding. Obviously a very dynamic and sophisticated art has been present in Mexico for many years, but I don't see that Aztecs in any way undermines or cannot be compatible with exhibitions of modern or contemporary art. You have people like Rivera of course who embraced that past very dramatically and others who totally rejected it - Dr Atl did not paint the Aztecs or the Olmec or the Maya, Frida Kahlo, Maria Izquierda - all painting at the same time and choosing to work in a different area. I think that it is something that will always probably dog Mexican art and culture, to be inward looking and outward looking at the same time.

© Adrian Locke, Cristiana Bertazoni Martins, and Isobel Whitelegg, 2003.