Festival Hat

About this Brooklyn Icon

The Brooklyn Museum is commemorating its 200th anniversary by spotlighting 200 standout objects in its encyclopedic collection.

This exquisite, richly ornamented traditional hat is typical of a style worn by Aymara dancers and officials during festivals and other special occasions to this day. It has its origins in Indigenous, pre-Conquest ceremonies from a silver-mining area of Bolivia at the foot of Cerro Potosí, a mountain in the Andes. The mountain—the center of life in the region—is shown on the front of the hat by a triangular shape dotted with tiny depictions of llamas, once used to transport silver from the mines. Covering the rest of the hat are detailed images of elephants, lions, birds, mermaids, cornucopia, and plants and flowers. The sun and moon, which the Aymara saw as gods, are prominent. All are interwoven with flowing designs typical of colonial Andean art.

Although the Aymara, who live primarily in the Andes of Bolivia, Peru, and Chile, mined small amounts of silver around Cerro Potosí, it wasn’t until 1545 that a major deposit was found there by the Spanish. As a result, silver was considered precious but was not uncommon in Spanish colonial art (this hat is from the 1700s). It was through the exploitation of the Indigenous population and enslaved African people that the Potosí silver was mined.