About UT's Casa Herrera Project

During its 15-year tenure, UT's Casa Herrera project provided a major venue for research and teaching of Pre-Columbian art and archaeology, promoting opportunities for dialogue and engagement among scholars, faculty, and students from diverse disciplines, numerous institutions, and countries. 

Dating to approximately 1680, Casa Herrera is a colonial property located in the heart of Antigua, Guatemala, just one block north of the city’s Central Park area. From 2009 – 2024, the facility served as an extension of The Mesoamerica Center of the Department of Art and Art History and the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin (UT). The Mesoamerica Center coordinated and organized many academic programs and community outreach activities at Casa Herrera, advancing the center's operations on a broader international scale and establishing an important presence in Guatemala to facilitate further learning, exploration, and appreciation of Pre-Columbian art and archaeology and the Indigenous cultures of the region.

Casa Herrera is owned by the Fundación Pantaleón, a not-for-profit foundation organized and operated under the laws of Guatemala for charitable, educational and cultural purposes consistent with UT's mission. Under a Usufruct agreement, the Fundación Pantaleón made available to UT the use of Casa Herrera as a year-round teaching and research facility operated by the university's Department of Art and Art History through The Mesoamerica Center. Among its many spaces, Casa Herrera featured a large lecture/auditorium hall, various teaching and study spaces, offices, resident dormitories, and a full kitchen that served various UT programs, activities, residents, staff and guests, as well as a research library space that was used to house a selection of UT library books of relevant Mesoamerican topics in English and Spanish.

Mission Statement

The mission of UT's Casa Herrera project, as directed by The Mesoamerica Center, was to create new opportunities for education and research, facilitating learning and dialogue in many fields of study among scholars and students from institutions and nations in Central America and beyond.  In addition to its primary role as a place of scholarly research and teaching, UT's Casa Herrera project aimed to be an important hub for community engagement with academia and the arts through regular public programming such as lectures, workshops, and exhibitions.

While Mesoamerican art, archaeology and anthropology represented the primary research focus of UT's Casa Herrera project, it also explored a wider array of interdisciplinary activities and uses that resonated with the university's mission. As UT continues to strive toward academic excellence through interrelated and comprehensive educational opportunities, UT's Casa Herrera project embraced research and cross-departmental collaborations within the greater UT campus community, as well as with other higher education institutions in the US and abroad, in academic areas such as languages, education, Latin American studies, government, public health, and continuing education.

About Fundación Pantaleón

The Fundación Pantaleón is a private, apolitical, nonprofit organization that develops community welfare programs in Guatemala and Mexico, countries where its founding company Grupo Pantaleón has business operations. Its mission is to promote education, health, and environmental projects that offer sustainable opportunities to the communities it serves. Projects include the development of primary education centers, technical skill programs, health clinics, and planting projects.