Dr. Christiane Clados Exhibition

econstructing the Pre-Columbian World: Ancient American Civilizations through the eyes of a Scientist Painter

By Christiane Clados, Ph.D. | September, 2004

This exhibition of archeological reconstruction artwork by Christiane Clados, Ph.D., illustrated archaeological finds in the Aztec and Maya lands in Mexico and Guatemala and the former Inca lands of South America. The exhibit introduced visitors to the aesthetic world of pre-Columbian Native American peoples. The exhibit was built around a group of brilliantly colored paintings by an archaelogical iconographer. The artist, Dr. Christiane Clados, set out to show that art is not the opposite of science, but rather that artistic imagination completes the mission of science by making scientific findings humanly vivid. Her work sparked the "joy of discovery" because archaelogical art compresses into the image a wealth of information that can be appreciated at many levels.