Pablo León de la Barra, Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, Latin America, explores the idea of the tropics, which he frames as being about an artist’s own sense of place as well as location and climate. He discusses the work of Mariana Castillo Deball, which is concerned with the significance of archeological and anthropological research, and with related ideas of authenticity and value. Castillo Deball’s Stelae Storage comes from her research into plaster copies of Mayan stelae made by archeologist Alfred Maudslay. [June 2014]