Mapuche Artifacts: The Václav Šolc and Olga Kandertová Collection in the Náprstek Museum

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Václav Šolc (1919–1995) was an ethnographer and Americanist, a curator of American collections, and later a director of the Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures in Prague. Over three journeys to the Mapuche on Huapi Island on Lake Budi in Araucania, Chile, between 1966 and 1971, he amassed a collection of forty objects. His initial, three-month expedition amongst the Mapuche, completed with Olga Píchová-Kandertová (1944) in 1966, was chronicled by Šolc in his popular science book Pod chilskými sopkami (Under the Chilean Volcanoes). In 2022, the author of this article revisited Huapi Island to delve deeper into Šolc’s collection and to engage with the local Mapuche community. The article aims to present Šolc’s collection of Mapuche artifacts, focusing on the circumstances of their acquisition. Additionally, it will try to incorporate the perspectives of the local Mapuche, who, through the author’s journey to Huapi, obtained 234 photographs by Šolc, depicting their friends, relatives, and neighbours, after fifty-six years.