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Research Project

The Diversity of Color: Safeguarding Natural Dye Sources and Practices in Michoacán and Oaxaca

2024 – 2025

Key Question

Project Summary

Recent international interest in dyes extracted from plants and insects in Mexico is putting pressure on the local communities that manage these culturally significant natural resources. This project will facilitate local efforts to study the organisms and improve their cultivation, conservation, and ongoing use.

Research Team

Claudia Brittenham

Claudia Brittenham

Professor of Art History

University of Chicago

Claudia Brittenham is Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the art of Mesoamerica, with interests in the materiality of art and the politics of style. She is the author of Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, as well as The Murals ...

Sonia Hernandez

Sonia Hernandez

Research Associate Professor, Department of Surgery

University of Chicago

Sonia L. Hernandez majored in Human Nutrition at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico, and is a registered dietitian from the same university. She got received a M.A. and Ph.D. in Human Nutrition and Metabolic Biology at The University of Columbia in the City of New York, training under Darrell ...

Oscar Pineda-Catalan

Oscar Pineda-Catalan

Senior Associate Instructional Professor, Biological Sciences Collegiate Division

University of Chicago

Oscar Pineda-Catalan is an Associate Senior Instructional Professor at the University of Chicago’s Biological Sciences Collegiate Division. He has co-led the effort to redesign the Core Biology curriculum by incorporating a hands-on approach to scientific research and reasoning, immersing students ...

Michael Rossi

Michael Rossi

Associate Professor of History

University of Chicago

Michael Rossi is an historian of medicine and science in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. His work focuses on the historical and cultural metaphysics of the body: how different people at different times understood questions of beauty, truth, falsehood, pain, pleasure, ...

Reading List

Arroyo Ortiz, L.

Tintes Naturales Mexicanos: su aplicación en algodón, henequén y lana Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, 2020 Read

Artes de México

Del Rojo al Rosa Mexicano Revista Libro (111), 2013 Read

Artes de México

Textiles de Oaxaca Revista Libro (35), Segunda Edición, 2000 Read

Campana, M. G., et. Al.

America’s red gold: multiple lineages of cultivated cochineal Mexico. Ecology and Evolution 2015, 5(3), 607–617 Read

Johnson, K.

Saberes Enlazados. La obra de Irmgard Weitlaner Johnson CONACULTA y Artes de México, 2015 Read

Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes

Rojo Mexicano. La grana cochinilla en el arte Secretaria de Cultura – Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2017 Read

Plá Perez, I; Sánchez Rull, J. A.

La Familia Gutiérrez Reyes. Tejedoras de Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca CONACULTA, 2014 Read

Stresser-Péan, C.

De la Vestimenta y los hombres. Una perspectiva histórica de la indumentaria indígena en México Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2012 Read

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