Invented civilizations are usually thought of as the stuff of science fiction novels and video games, not museums.
Yet in 1972, the Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art at Cornell University exhibited “The Civilization of Llhuros,” an imaginary Iron Age civilization. Created by Cornell Professor of Art Norman Daly, who died in 2008, the show resembled a real archaeological exhibition, with more than 150 objects on display.
Unaware of Llhuros, Beauvais Lyons, now Chancellor’s Professor of Art at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, started fabricating and documenting an imaginary ancient culture using ceramics and printmaking for his undergraduate thesis in 1980. The following year, as a graduate student, he learned about Llhuros and began a decades-long correspondence with Daly. Read the full article on The Conversation.
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