Biography
Andrew James Hamilton is a scholar of Indigenous art and architecture of the Americas. His work is invested in analyzing objects--how they were made, used, and eventually disused--in order to understand why they were created and what cultural meanings they bore. He is interested in artifacts of all media, but especially ones made from biological materials that trace the intersection of art history and natural history, including textiles. He is a practicing artist and frequently illustrates his own publications.
As Associate Curator of Arts of the Americas at the Art Institute of Chicago, Hamilton stewards the museum's collection of ancient through contemporary Indigenous American art, as well as colonial Latin American art. He was the venue curator and a catalog author for the exhibition Jeremy Frey: Woven, a mid-career retrospective of the work of acclaimed Passamaquoddy basket weaver Jeremy Frey. Hamilton seeks to present more inclusive and representative histories of art in this hemisphere and is committed to building relationships with artists and communities throughout the Americas. As an art historian, curator, author, and artist, he is concerned with the ethical, social, and intellectual stakes of art history in the twenty-first century.
Hamilton's most recent book, The Royal Inca Tunic: A Biography of an Andean Masterpiece, was published by Princeton University Press in 2024. It examines the most famous object of ancient Andean art--an intricately patterned tunic conserved by Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC--and argues that the garment was likely being woven by two women artists on the eve of the Spanish invasion for the last Inca emperor, Atahualpa. The book reveals that the tunic is both unfinished and has suffered significant dye fading. This project was supported by fellowships from the Getty Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, Dumbarton Oaks, and a Barr Ferree Publication Subvention Grant from Princeton University.
Hamilton’s previous book, Scale & the Incas, was published by Princeton University Press in 2018. Although questions of form are fundamental to the study of art history, the issue of scale has been underexamined. This work analyzes the role of scale in Inca material culture, built environments, and worldviews, arguing that it was a central tenet of their intellectual tradition and a fundamental way they perceived and expressed meaning. Scale & the Incas includes over seventy hand-drawn and -painted color plates that depict the scales of nearly two hundred artifacts and archaeological sites alongside embedded scale markers, other objects, and silhouettes of hands and bodies.
Hamilton received his PhD and MA from Harvard University and his BA from Yale University. He was previously a member of the Princeton Society of Fellows and a research associate in the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale of the Collège de France.
