Pre-Columbian Art and Art History

The acceptance of pre-Columbian art as true and great art did not come speedily. In fact, it has not yet been as generally accepted as has the art of the great civilizations of the Near East and the Far East. An attempt is made here to trace the slow progress toward its general acknowledgment and to examine some of the problems now confronting those concerned with the subject.When, in the second half of the eighteenth century, humanistic studies gained a wider interest, there already existed a predilection for the art of Greece and Rome and what was built, developed, and permuted on these styles. Neither the Near East nor the Far East was then sufficiently known to be given serious esthetic consideration, and their artistic products were appreciated mainly as rarities and curios; the arts that throve or lay in ruins elsewhere over the globe were glimpsed only occasionally in the travel descriptions of intrepid voyagers.