In a coup for the Boca Raton Museum of Art and South Florida, the Boca museum will be the first stop of a world tour of the exhibit “Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru,” opening to the public on Oct. 16.

Presented by Cityneon with support from the Government of Peru and the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, and in partnership with Inkaterra Asociación, the collection is on loan from Museo Larco in Lima, Peru, and Museo de Sitio Manuel Chávez Ballón in Aguas Calientes, Peru.

It is the first time many of these objects have been seen outside of Peru.

“As we get closer to launching the premiere engagement of this exhibit, our team is truly excited to share this world-class production with South Floridians,” said Anthony Tann, president of World Heritage Exhibitions.

The immersive and interactive exhibit features the history, artifacts, and culture of ancient Andean cultures and the Inca people, and many of the 192 priceless artifacts on display are from royal tombs, including spectacular objects that belonged to noble Andean lords, such as a fully intact gold attire of a Chimú emperor dating back to 1300 A.D.

In part of the exhibit, visitors will be guided by a mythical Andean hero, Ai Apaec, and gain an understanding of the forces of nature that led to his death and subsequent rebirth.

Historians consider the ancient Andean civilizations of Peru as one of the six “pristine” cradles of civilization in the world, on par with those in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley (present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan), China, and Mexico.

Rivaled only by ancient Egypt in longevity and by the Roman Empire in engineering, Andean societies dominated a substantial segment of South America for more than 3,000 years, straight through the reign of the Incan Empire.

The Inca civilization, the last and largest empire in the pre-Colombian Americas, flourished without written language, the wheel, money, steel, iron, or draft animals, and it was the last great society to emerge in that era.

The exhibit, which highlights both the Incan cultures (1438–1533) and earlier Andean empires dating back thousands of years to the Chavín empire in 900 BCE, will inhabit two floors of the museum and feature an immersive, virtual reality experience designed to recreate the ancient spiritual mountaintop empires that existed 7,000 feet up in the clouds of the Andean Mountains.

Subsequent to the Chavín empire, five additional empires flourished in Peru, ending in 1533 with the Incas’ reign. The Incas, who ruled for 100 years, were the last chapter in thousands of years of ancient Andean civilizations.

Nestled in a cloud forest, the Inca Empire’s enduring symbol of architectural prowess is protected by twin sacred mountaintops and is invisible from below. For the exhibit, the ancient city has been recreated complete with sounds of jaguars and macaws and other sounds of the Amazon’s rainforest.

In 2020, during the unprecedented closure of the site during the COVID-19 pandemic, the first-ever virtual reality expedition of Machu Picchu was shot using state-of-the-art drone virtual reality technology.

Titled “Machu Picchu and the Spirit of the Condor,” the virtual reality experience features the grand Inca emperor Pachacuti, who infuses viewers with the spirit of the condor and flies with them across the ancient landscape.

Viewers will encounter the city’s ancient inhabitants and experience some of its most iconic locations, from the Temple of the Sun to the heights of Huayna Picchu.

“It is an honor to be the home of the world premiere of ‘Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru’ and a privilege to work with such esteemed partners to bring this exhibition to our community,” said Irvin Lippman, executive director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art at the exhibit announcement last May.

“We look forward to introducing South Florida and the world to the wonders of Machu Picchu and the power and beauty of the Inca civilization for what promises to be a memorable exhibit,” he said.

Parkland resident Thelma Fail celebrated her 102nd birthday on Sept. 24. Life was different when she was born in 1919.

When Fail was a child growing up in Florida, there was no air conditioning and people stayed cool with outings to the beach for the ocean breeze, using trees for shade, sitting on their porches, or cooling down with fans.

Much of Broward County was considered uninhabitable because of the Everglades. At that time, Wiles Road was a two-lane road with a canal, farms dotted the landscape, and residents rode horses up and down State Road 7 and Wiles Road.

Fail moved to what is now Parkland in 1978 and currently lives in the same house she lived in with her third husband, Willis Fail, who passed away in 2001.

The year Fail was born, life expectancy for women was only 56. The world was recovering from World War I, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, and Europe was under reconstruction. Refugees were returning home and being resettled, and the Spanish flu pandemic was wreaking havoc around the world. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote, was passed by Congress in June of that year, and sheep were grazing on the White House lawn in Washington, DC.

One of the most tumultuous years in American history, that decade saw race riots, anarchist bombings, the Red Scare, and the stock market crash of 1929. The year 1919 saw the end of the Progressive Era, the beginning of anti-immigration laws, an attempt to “return to normalcy,” and the approach of the decadent Roaring ’20s.

Over her 102 years, Fail saw it all — another world war, another global outbreak (this time of COVID-19), social justice protests by Black Lives Matter, refugees (this time Afghan) being resettled, and instead of sheep on the White House lawn, there were extremists and insurrectionists.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Of course, technology has evolved during Fail’s lifetime — things such as television, computers and the internet, smartphones, microwaves, digital cameras, men and women in space, and social media.

Fail spent many years in Winter Haven, FL, where she worked at the local Publix for more than 25 years and retired from there.

“She’s a wonderful Christian woman,” says daughter-in-law Lynn Yoos, a firefighter/paramedic with Palm Beach County Fire Rescue. “She always had advice and knowledge of her life to share with you when you needed it. She was always there for her family.

“To this day, Thelma is so loving and sweet and still a fabulous cook,” Yoos says. “Thelma would cook Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, and you knew you would have the most wonderful food. To this day she still bakes and makes her famous brownies.

“She created a real feeling of love and family,” Yoos remembers. “She always made her guests feel important and special.”

Carol Fail, Thelma’s daughter-in-law, lives next door to Thelma. She remembers her throwing dinners and parties for friends and family. “She was a great planner. Everyone always got along with one another,” she says.

“We love her to death,” says Carol Fail.

“We all want her to know we say, ‘Thanks, Mom, we love you.’”

Coral Springs collage artist Janet Gold emerged as a street artist (with permission) during last spring’s COVID-19 quarantine.

Busy working in her Tamarac studio and applying for grants and other opportunities, her trajectory changed when she was selected for her first Collage as Street Art residency through Kolaj magazine.

The premise of the residency is to bring collage to street art in the manner of Banksy, Keith Haring, Basquiat, and Shepard Fairey.

Not an underground artist, Gold has been a board member of Fort Lauderdale’s Art in Public Places, the Coral Springs Museum of Art, and the National Association of Women Artists/Florida Chapter.

The prolific artist, who twice won the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship (1999 and 2008) and who has had her work on exhibit at both the Coral Springs and the Boca Raton museums of art, was thrilled to be accepted as one of 15 collage artists from around the world.

“I’m not your typical street artist,” says Gold, the former first lady of Coral Springs (her husband, Roy Gold, was mayor of that city from 2010 to 2012).

“I had to pick an issue to bring to the streets,” Gold says.  “This is a different audience and different venue than my museum-quality collages.”

“In this project-driven collage residency, artists delve into the history, methods, and major artists of the ‘street art’ movement with an emphasis on collage,” says Christopher Kurts of Kolaj Magazine.

“Participants put these methods into practice, taking their collage art out into the streets while documenting the entire process, which will be published in a Kolaj Street Krewe book later this year.”

Not comfortable tagging her city at night, in the dark, dressed in black, Gold sought and got permission from five venues in and around Broward County to display the results of her residency, a project she calls “EVERYBODY’S EVERYTHING.”

The title refers to the theme of gender fluidity, and Gold’s large figurative collages depict mixed-and-matched body parts showcasing her take on the social movement.

Using images she cuts from vintage fashion magazines, she reimagines the stories they tell.

In August 2020, Gold installed her works under the moniker “Criminal Collage with Permission,” at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, the Art Gallery 21 in Wilton Manors, the Cook and the Cork restaurant in Coral Springs, and the Girls’ Club and FATVillage, both in Fort Lauderdale.

“Janet’s work is very interesting, especially considering that it is collaged work created to be a mural on a building’s exterior,” says FATVillage’s founder, Doug McCraw. “By employing different anatomical photos to compose multiple aspects of gender and identity, Janet’s created a contemporary commentary on her subject matter.

“She has a very experienced composition aesthetic and a wonderful way of expressing herself through her art.”

At the Cook and the Cork restaurant, Gold’s collage depicts a female model’s head with long dark hair abruptly juxtaposed with a second woman’s torso and exposed breasts, partially covered by that model’s long blonde hair. A large feminine hand holding a lit cigarette dominates the foreground, while a pair of androgenous legs in mid-stride, clad in jeans and black-and-white Converse completes the image.

The high-fashion images are at once edgy and provocative and highlight the artist’s perspective that we all exist in each other.

Constance Ruppender of Art Gallery 21, who exhibited Gold’s past works in a one-woman show at her gallery, says, “I admire Janet as an artist, and as a doer. She doesn’t just make art. She puts her creations out to the universe with an open heart and inspires others.”

For Gold, who has been in museums and galleries and the recipient of a number of grants, winning the Kolaj residency is the icing on the cake. And while she will be retiring her tag name, we’re sure we’ll see a lot more work by Janet Gold in the future.