ART EXHIBIT : An Inviting Look at Pre-Columbian Creativity : Presentation at Santa Barbara Museum includes fascinating examples of works from collections of several museums.

Exotic, pagan unfathomable. If you are anything like me, these are words you would use to describe the objects that constitute a pre-Columbian art exhibit. Add exceedingly erudite text and descriptions and you have the all-too-typical and oh-so-forgettable museum experience that many of us have come to expect. Then again, as fascinated as we Westerners are with distant and ancient cultures, we don’t necessarily want our exotica served up too familiarly. It would lose its appeal.

The current exhibit at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, “Sacred Gifts: Pre-Columbian Art and Creativity,” which runs until March 12, has struck a proper balance. It doesn’t bludgeon the average person over the head. It makes museum-goers work a little to gain an appreciation of the select meso-American, Central American and Andean objects in the exhibit. There are no simulated tomb excavations, replete with ornate grave goods and a soundtrack of distant macaws and howler monkeys, but the exhibition does educate in a user-friendly sort of way. This is largely due to the persistence and scholarship of exhibit curator Jeanette Favrot Peterson.

Peterson is a professor of art history at UC Santa Barbara, specializing in the ancient American civilizations. She organized the diverse array of objects--from bizarre clay figures with oversized heads to black-stone masks and feather headdresses--according to the materials they were made from. This simple format for Santa Barbara’s first pre-Columbian show is the key to its success. Ranging from polychrome pottery, textiles, and objects made of stone, precious metals, shell and feathers, the artifacts on display demonstrate the variety of materials used in the Americas before the Spanish conquest.

Peterson sees the exhibit as an opportunity to reach beyond the classroom and expose the general public to pre-Columbian art and the distinct cultures that produced it.

“I have grown weary of scholarship that has become excessively esoteric and of academicians who can only be understood by those who speak the same language,” she said. Her goal is to demystify the ancient cultures of the Americas by stressing the strong unifying elements that existed among the different groups represented in the exhibit.

Pre-Columbian people held a “fundamental belief in the sacred landscape,” said Peterson said. The gods, ancestors and spirits who controlled natural cycles and the earth’s fecundity were thought to be receptive to the offerings and ceremonies through which humans petitioned their generosity. Works of art often signified elite status and, when used in ritual, were thought to enhance their owner’s influence in the supernatural realm.

Peterson is widely regarded, by students and colleagues alike, as an exceptional scholar and teacher. Much scholarly and scientific investigation was required to determine the authenticity and provenance, where possible, of each piece considered for the exhibit. Museum curators and private collectors worldwide are re-sorting their storeroom shelves and displays to separate the cunning forgeries from genuine pre-Columbian artifacts. This is why Peterson began her selection of artifacts for the current exhibition in the museum’s basement.

With an eye well-trained in the design elements of pre-Columbian cultures, Peterson culled out aberrant pieces--those that did not conform to the design qualities, spatial relations and iconography within the various canons of pre-Columbian art.

“All objects have stories to tell, largely through a visual and pictorial language,” Peterson said. Anthropologists and art historians study the visual information provided by pre-Columbian works of art for clues vital to reconstructing a more complete picture of the society to which they belong.

Working with chief curator Robert Henning and six UCSB graduate students over several months, Peterson determined that only 20 of the nearly 100 objects represented in the museum’s permanent pre-Columbian collection were suitable for “Sacred Gifts.”

In the end, an assortment of objects spanning a period from 3,000 B.C. to the time of European contact in the 16th Century, were assembled from eight museums including the UC Santa Barbara’s University Museum, UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Mexican Museum in San Francisco.

Graduate students who helped organize “Sacred Gifts” benefited from working with experts and original materials while they developed their research topics and documentation.

But in the end, it will probably be visitors who will get the most out of Santa Barbara’s debut exhibit of pre-Columbian art and its accompanying written materials.

Details

* WHAT: “Sacred Gifts: Pre-Columbian Art and Creativity.”

* WHERE: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St.

* WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Closed Monday. Exhibit continues through March 12.

* HOW MUCH: $4, $3 senior citizens, $1.50 students with valid ID.

* CALL: 963-4364.