Doris Heyden

The influence of Doris Heyden in the field of pre-Columbian studies is evident from the two co-ordinated volumes of essays that have been dedicated to her. The first, in Spanish, is Chalchihuite edited by María de Jesús Rodríguez-Shadow and Beatriz Barba Ahuatzin de Piña Chan (1999). The second, in English, is the similarly titled In Chalchihuitl in quetzalli/Precious Greenstone Precious Quetzal Feather edited by Eloise Quiñones Keber (2000). The latter volume contains an interview with her.

Heyden was a contributing editor of the influential Handbook of Latin American Studies (1961–68). All her writings were solidly based on archaeological fieldwork in many regions of Mexico. She also studied folk art and ethnology. Research in the world's great libraries and archives was another important aspect of her scholarship.

Heyden began formal graduate studies at the Escuela de Antropología, part of UNAM, Mexico's national university in 1956. She obtained her M.A. in 1969 and eventually acquired a doctorate there.

Heyden studied art history and design at New York City's Pratt Institute, winning Senior Honors in 1936. After graduation she did illustrations for Mademoiselle magazine. It was in New York City that she became fascinated with the drawings of José Clemente Orozco and Mexican art in general. During the mid-1940s she traveled to Mexico. A friend gave her the name of a Mexican photographer. That man was Manuel Álvarez Bravo, arguably Mexico's greatest modernist photographer. Heyden and Álvarez Bravo married and had a son and daughter together. Mexico was Heyden's home for the rest of her life.

Doris Heyden (née Heydenreich; June 2, 1905 – September 25, 2005) was a prominent scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, particularly those of central Mexico. She was born in East Orange, New Jersey, United States. She died on September 25, 2005 from the lingering after effects of a stroke suffered in 1999.

Born Doris Heydenreich Selz in 1905, Heyden claimed noble German and Austrian descent from a family with titles going back to 1312. She spent a happy and prosperous childhood in Maplewood, New Jersey and Glencoe, Illinois with access to New York City and Chicago. Her early life was illuminated by art, music, and books. She began writing and publishing at about age ten, at first concentrating on poetry and mysteries, and then contributing to Newark, New Jersey newspapers around age thirteen. Heyden started painting even earlier, when she was five years old. Although she never became a great artist, she made her mark in another field.