IN TRIBUTE 159 Peter Furst numerous, but he mentioned them only occasionally to entertain us (and perhaps himself as well), yet he remained faithful to the one he loved. He was in cahoots with Mephisto on the sly, and all of his years were a continuous season of spring. He led us to believe that he had been seduced by hell but knew all along that God would be impatiently awaiting him in heaven, eager for the next party to begin. Daniel Hourdé impact of daggers.” But the smiles of women were a lure to him, and this unrepentant sinner navigated toward them like a fi sh in water damned by some improbable metempsychosis. Women—they were his real passion, his true vocation. I have never known a man who loved so many women so passionately, so unequivocally, and so remorselessly. They were all miraculous. “Look, man, look at how beautiful they are!” he would say each time there was an apparition. He was a kind of ideal Don Juan, and this seducer always left a lingering memory. His conquests were In March 2015, the esteemed cultural anthropologist Peter T. Furst quietly passed away in Santa Fe. At ninety-two, he had led a full, creative, and productive life. Peter worked as a professor, teaching, pursuing research, writing, producing documentary films, and curating exhibits. He was inherently curious, interested, and interesting, always open-minded and able to bridge many worlds. Although the focus of his work was on Pre-Columbian cultures, their surviving artifacts, and the indigenous peoples of the Americas and their belief systems, Peter was an avid collector of African art. He had a mind and an “eye.” Peter was as easily enraptured by a beautiful object as he was intrigued by a novel idea, and he had a wonderful sense of humor. I knew Peter for thirty-six years, a long time, and I always learned from him and enjoyed his good company. I will miss him, and so will so many others. Born in Cologne in 1922, Peter and his family had the good sense to leave Germany in 1937, arriving first in the United Kingdom before settling in the United States. During World War II, Peter served in the United States Army. He returned to Europe to serve as a correspondent for the newspaper Stars and Stripes. Peter was present and reported on the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. After the war, Peter returned to California, where he worked for the United Press and as a film producer. While making documentaries for a television show called Expeditions, he met Donalda—“ Dee”—whom he married. Sadly, she was killed in a car accident. Their son, Robert “Bobby” Furst was still young at the time. Peter later married Jill Leslie while he was teaching at the State University in Albany. They, as Furst and Furst, are the authors of the acclaimed book Pre-Columbian Art of Mexico. Peter and Jill separated after twenty-five years together. Peter’s long involvement with the indigenous cultures of the Americas began at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. In 1964, he curated the first exhibit in the United States of Pre-Columbian gold, drawing together artifacts from Mexico, Central America, and the Andean region of South America. In 1968, he curated another landmark exhibit, this one on the art of the Huichol Indians, a small and traditionbound indigenous group living in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental. Peter’s work at the museum dovetailed with doctoral studies in anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and subsequent work at its Latin American Center. Peter later worked at the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/ Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was a prolific author, and his many books and articles are notable for his insightful use of ethnographic research as an anthropologist to illuminate hidden or lost meanings of Pre-Columbian artifacts. Peter stimulated interest in the arts of distant and remote cultures, and he helped to give this art meaning to us today. I consider myself one of his innumerable students. He was a true professor. Spencer S. Throckmorton
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