Art historian Natalia Majluf’s Inventing Indigenism derives from her doctoral dissertation, which she returned to after working for more than twenty years (1995–2018) at the Museo de Arte de Lima, first as curator in chief and then as director. She was able to revise, update, and publish her research while she was the Simón Bolívar Visiting Chair at the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge (2018–19).
This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the modern construction of Peru, a process Majluf examines through a deep, well-thought-out textual and visual proposition based on a single painting: Francisco Laso’s Habitante de las Cordilleras del Perú (Inhabitant of the Peruvian Highlands, 1855). The strength of this painting is already latent on the cover; its seriousness, massiveness, and centrality are visually evident and become even more influential throughout the text, as Majluf intelligently examines modern indigenism and the...