Sacred Light, Brilliant Matter

In October 1492, Christopher Columbus stumbled unexpectedly into a world of bright mythical realities. Few events changed human history more than his encounter with what we now call the Americas. It was perhaps the greatest irony of this momentous episode that Europeans began a dialogue with the local inhabitants by expressing an interest in gold, which was coincidentally often exchanged between indigenous elites, albeit in alloyed form. Columbus admired the shiny ornaments worn by the Caribbean Taíno chiefs, for which, setting a virtually continent-wide precedent, he exchanged shiny glass beads and base-metal artefacts. At the possible site of this first meeting – a Taíno village on San