Dumbarton Oaks, Library of Congress, and National Museum of the American Indian convened a symposium called “Mesoamerican Codices: New Discoveries and New Directions.” This meeting of the Pre-Columbian Studies Colloquium was organized by Diana Magaloni Kerpel and Barbara E. Mundy.
Betsy Haude, from the Library’s Conservation Division, and Tana Villafana, from the Research and Testing Division were invited to present their work on two significant codices and I was honored to provide some opening remarks for the sessions at the Library:
The Library of Congress holds in its collections two of the earliest post-contact manuscripts from the Valley of Mexico: the (Way-hoat-zinc-o ) Huexotzinco Codex and the (Ohz-toh-tik-pak) Oztoticpac Lands Map.
These manuscripts are of enduring interest to scholars for a variety of reasons, including their use of pictographic writing, their depiction of 16th century property and goods, and the aesthetics of their drawings.
They are also notable for the finely-crafted materials used in their composition, which will be the focus of the session this morning.
Successful conservation requires careful examination and documentation of objects’ condition, coupled with an understanding of their materiality and their intellectual value. New analytical techniques used by our conservators and conservation scientists support all of these modes of engagement. These techniques help us provide the most effective conservation treatments and develop an optimal preservation strategy for these objects.
In addition, these analyses reveal information that contributes to the body of scholarly knowledge about Mesoamerican codices and furthers our appreciation of these artifacts. The Library is committed to good stewardship of the materials in our care, materials that come from across the world and from every era of recorded history. We recognize this in our mission statement when we refer to a collection that is both universal and enduring.
In that mission statement, endurance is the responsibility of Preservation. And in meetings like this one, we see how endurance is actually achieved through the interaction of scientifically-informed conservation and scholarship, focused on the point where the material facts and intellectual significance of these codices converge to produce a diverse and growing body of inquiry today and in many days to come.