Living in Peru : your everyday companion

(by Wolfy Becker)

The Museo Larco Herrera in Lima, Peru (Photo: Wolfy Becker)

On a beautiful spring afternoon in Lima yesterday, I decided to follow one of our LIP reader's advice, grabbed my camera and headed for the Museo Larco Herrera, located on Av. Bolívar 1515, in the disctrict of Pueblo Libre.

As its is usual in Lima, the first thing you see upon arrival is nothing but a huge wall surrounding the actual target. But after passing through its large entrance, my eyes jumped when locating the unique vice-royal mansion of the 18th century built over a 7th century pre-Columbian pyramid and its surrounding beautiful gardens whose various flower colores were even more emphasized by the big blue sky.

The museum features one of the finest gold and silver collection from ancient Peru, including the famous erotic ceramics collection, one of the most visited Peruvian tourist attractions.

The Larco Herrera is also one of the few museums in the world where visitors can enter the storage area with its 45.000 classified archaeological objects.

Its masterpieces are considered worldwide icons of Pre-Columbian art and have been on exhibit at the world's leading museums.

Museum founder "Don Rafael" Larco Herrera (Photo: Larco Herrera Musem)

Rafael Larco Herrera, simply known as "Ray" among his English-speaking friends and colleagues, was born on May 18, 1901, at Hacienda Chiclin, Chicama Valley, near Peru's northern city of Trujillo. Raised on the sugar hacienda with his younger brothers, Constante and Javier, he received his primary school education in Trujillo at the Instituto Moderno de Trujillo, Colegio Ntra Señora de Guadalupe, and the Barranco English Institute.

In 1914, he was sent to secondary school in the United States and entered the Tome High School in Maryland. While there, he was one of the outstanding high school athletes in the state of Maryland, especially in football, although he was also active in baseball, soccer, and athletics in general. In 1919, he entered Cornell University to study agriculture and later then attended New York University's School of Engineering and the School of Commerce as a special, non-degree student (1922-1923), where he studied business administration and finance.

The primary purpose of this United States education was not to obtain formal degrees, but to study engineering with a focus on mechanizing the sugar production at the family's hacienda, and to become familiar with the problems of welfare, education, and organization of the sugar workers and their families. He also developed a practical understanding of business operations. To further these studies, Ray also traveled to Cuba, Puerto Rico, Europe, and Hawaii.

wonderful details (Photo: Wolfy Becker)

He returned to Peru in late 1923 and a year later his interest in the archaeology of his country began as a result of his father's influence. He had lived in a museum atmosphere since his early childhood during which his father had begun assembling a collection of North Peruvian pre-Columbian pottery. Later, while traveling in Europe, his father visited the Prado Museum in Madrid and noticed that their collection of Peruvian archaeological materials was poor. He consequently donated his entire  collection to Spain, and today it is on exhibit in the Museo Arqueológico in Madrid.

However, he kept one outstanding Mochica portrait vessel which formed the nucleus of a new archaeological collection. In 1925, Larco's father acquired 600 pottery vessels and other archaeological objects from his brother-in-law, Alfredo Hoyle, and a smaller collection from Dr. Mejía, and he gave the entire collection to his son, Ray, who was now also known as "Don Rafael", like is father.

The collection grew so rapidly that it had to be moved to a separate building on the Hacienda Chiclin, which was inaugurated as the Museo Rafael Larco Herrera in July 1926, to protect the archaeological riches of Peru and also as a monument to his father.

In 1933, two large private collections were acquired, one of over 3,000 pieces from Mr. Carranza in Trujillo, and the other with 8,000 pieces of pottery, metal, and textiles from Carlos A. Roa of the Hacienda Clara in the Santa Valley. The transfer of the Roa collection from Santa Valley to Chicama Valley without damaging the artifacts was a major operation, since the Pan American Highway did not yet exist.

Golden ear and nose ornaments with turquoise inlays (Photo: Wolfy Becker)

After two weeks everything was packed with straw in wooden boxes and was loaded on trucks which drove along the beach at low tide. Everything arrived in good condition, but then the job of removing the salt impregnation had to be undertaken, something that had never been done before. One of the largest swimming pools on Hacienda Chiclin was commandeered for archaeology purposes. The pots were submerged and soaked for two months, during which 15 boys kept changing the water as it became contaminated with dissolved salt. After this treatment, the vessels could be stored and exhibited free of the damaging salt crystals.

At the same time Don Rafael was buying collections, he also began extensive explorations and excavations in the desolate foothills, valleys, and talus slopes of the Virú Valley and its branches, such as Cupisnique Quebrada. This field work became a family affair: everyone showed the same enthusiasm and love for the work of developing the Museum. Don Rafael and his brothers, Constante and Javier, his wife Isolina, and their close friend Enrique Jacobs, spent considerable time together in the field. Much valuable data on grave-lot association were recorded, information which would be of great help to scholars if it could be published.

The Museum grew, containing some 40,000 complete pottery vessels and thousands of metal, textile, wood, and other artifacts. It filled 17 rooms at the Hacienda, and the overflow was so immense that a provisional roof had been built between two buildings.

In 1949, family business interests took Don Rafael from the north coast to Lima. A separation from his collections would have meant the halting of his archaeological research. He also felt that the collections would be more accessible to scholars, scientists, and interested persons if located in the capital. Therefore, a decision was made to move the entire collection to Lima, to construct a new Museum, and to create a Foundation to guarantee the permanence and maintenance of the Museum. The new Museo Rafael Larco Herrera was not only constructed in the architectural style of Trujillo of the early 1700s, but it incorporates grills, doors, columns, beams, and brackets from the manor house of the Marqueses de Herrera and Villahermosa in Trujillo.

When he was mayor of Trujillo, Don Rafael had tried to protect the house as a national historical monument, since it was one of the best surviving examples of Colonial architecture. Later, political interests however allowed that the house was destroyed. Although the few salvaged items give the Museum in Lima a colonial flavor, in all other aspects it is modern.

ancient erotic art (Photo: Wolfy Becker)

It contains 6 exhibit halls plus a vault for the exhibition of gold and silver pieces, 11 storage rooms, 4 offices serving as library, laboratory and work room, and a garden, patio, and terrace where the largest stone objects are displayed. Plans at the time of Larco's death in 1966 included the addition of a conference room.

Don Rafael was particularly proud of the fact that the museum, his collections, the publications, and the staff had all been developed privately, without any direct or indirect governmental assistance.

His intimate knowledge of the thousands of objects in the Museum's collection was reflected in Larco' outstanding contributions to mythology and socio-political structure of the Mochica culture, based on scenes on the painted and modeled vessels, which permitted subdivisions into subperiods; and the detailed studies of the erotic pre-Columbian pottery, to mention just a few of his publications.

Tragically, his poor health over the last decade of his life, his pre-occupation with family business, and his limited time for archaeology isolated him from the international scientific community to which he had contributed so much. However, his publications, the collections of the Museo Rafael Larco Herrera, and the perpetuation to manage and direct the Museum, have assured for Rafael Larco Hoyle the position as the fourth great pioneer in Peruvian archaeology.


(photos by Wolfy Becker - text in part by Museo Larco Herrera)


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