 "Photo: Maddie Crum/The Daily Texan")
The Fine Arts Library unveiled a collection Thursday consisting of artifacts from South American countries including Colombia and Peru, as well as pieces from Africa, Mexico and the Southwestern United States.
The library received the artifacts, which are part of its newly unveiled Art and Art History Collection, from the Texas Memorial Museum, which is also located on the Forty Acres.
Most of the artifacts are sculptures of humans or animals or vases with the features of animals from pre-Columbian America. The exhibit also features 80 rugs from the Southwest.
Curator and art history professor Steve Bourget said the pieces have slowly trickled in from the museum since 2005, and he is hoping to receive more. The library is currently only displaying 30 percent of its collection, he said. The rest is still in boxes, but Bourget said he plans to rotate the pieces on display.
The Texas Memorial Museum has too many artifacts to house, so it is distributing them among the UT System. The UT Classics Department also received pieces, Bourget said.
“I want to make sure these things stay within the University System,” Bourget said. “You can’t recreate these antiquities.”
Bourget said the pieces are important for aiding teachers and students because many faculty teach in the fields featured in the exhibit, such as anthropology and Latin American studies.
Helen Buenrostro, a mathematics and pre-nursing sophomore, was one of the students who attended the event for extra credit in art history courses. She said she chose to visit the library’s exhibit over other options for extra credit because the Mexican artifacts remind her of her heritage.
“[The exhibit] is beautiful,” Buenrostro said. “I feel like it’s my own history.”
She said she wanted to send pictures of the artifacts to her Mayan friends in Mexico to show them what their ancestors created.
“It’s an important way for us to expand our mission of the College of Fine Arts, as well as UT and the community,” said head librarian Laura Schwartz.
The College of Fine Arts’ mission is to support research, teaching and learning the fine arts, she said.
“It doesn’t just have to be about books,” Schwartz said of the library.
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