By Judith H. Dobrzynski
As Susan E. Bergh walked through the special exhibition galleries of the Cleveland Museum of Art one day last week, she was surrounded by wooden crates—some empty, some opened, some still locked. Inside were many of the objects with which she will reveal an ancient culture that is all but unknown to most Americans but is now recognized as the first great empire of the Andes.
Long before the Incas walked the peaks and valleys of Peru in the 15th and 16th centuries, Ms. Bergh's subject—the Wari—reigned over land stretching from the highlands of central Peru, centered near the present-day city of Ayacucho, to the Pacific coastal zones below. Her exhibit, "Wari: Lords of the Ancient Andes," is the first North American exhibition devoted to this people, who thrived from about 600 to 1000. "I want people to understand that civilization in the Andes way predates the Inca and that the Wari was a very complicated, sophisticated civilization," she says. "And I want people to see how beautiful and enchanting it is."
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