About the Author & Her Work
Penny Morrill, Ph.D.,has developed a history of modern Mexican silver, interviewing designers and master silversmiths and gathering original material. She has worked with Dr. Hortensia Calvo, Director, and Dr. Christine Hernández, Archivist, in establishing the Spratling-Taxco Collection at Tulane-University’s Latin American Library in order to further the study of Mexico’s silver tradition and innovation. With Dr. Ilona Katzew and Ronald Belkin, Morrill has co-founded the permanent modern Mexican silver collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and assisted in the development of a collection at the Boston Fine Arts Museum. Dr. Morrill’s books on the subject include Mexican Silver (1994, 4th edition, 2007), Silver Masters of Mexico (1996), Maestros de Plata: William Spratling and the Mexican Silver Renaissance, the catalog for a traveling exhibit (2002-2004); and Margot Van Voorhies: The Art of Mexican Enamelwork (2011). Dr. Morrill also remains committed to supporting contemporary silver designers in Mexico. She is equally passionate about early colonial Mesoamerican Art. Her monograph on the Casa del Deán, a 16th century urban palace, was published in 2014 by the University of Texas Press. Morrill currently teaches pre-Columbian art history at George Mason University.
Dr. Morrill will be a special guest of honor at the Faulkner Society’s BIG READ program
at Tulane University, hosted in partnership with the Latin American Library, on Wednesday,
November 9 for a discussion by Mexican authors Jorge F. Hernandez and Yuri Herrera-Guttierez. Following the discussion at Freeman Hall in the Woldenberg Art Center, the
Latin American Library will host a reception to unveil an exhibit of newly acquired artifacts of Mexican culture, many of which have been donated to the Library by Dr. Morrill.
She also will appear at Words & Music, with a talk on the relationship between William Faulkner and William Spratling. An article by Dr. Morrill will appear in the 2015-2016 edition of The Double Dealer in the Faulkner and Friends section. The cover of the 2016 Words & Music program and the 2015-2016 Double Dealer is a drawing by William Spratling representing the departure from New Orleans of Spratling and Faulkner on a European tour. The drawing was presented to the Latin American Library earlier this year and it has not been published previously.