Chiapas Project
Digitization of Science Museum of Minnesota Chiapas materials
The Chiapas collection at SMM was assembled between the late 1970s and the early 2010s to document and celebrate the vibrant culture and art of the Maya of the region. The collection illustrates a remarkable cultural resilience that recalls the Pre-Columbian past, while also capturing the influences of globalization and international tourism of the last 40 years.
The collection includes textiles purchased from artists from over a dozen individual Maya communities, weaving tools and other items of modern Maya material culture, and an extensive ethnographic photo archive that illustrates both artisan work and daily life in the Chiapas highlands.
My role was to digitize Chiapas materials such as slides from the 1970-1990s. I catalogued over 1000 images, guided by collections managment protocals. Additionally I worked on matching the physical artifacts such as weaving materials and huipil’s to their digital counterpart.