President’s Message 2008–2009
A Galaxy of Thought
James F. Brooks
Some 40,000 years ago, our ancestors engaged in an explosion of symbolic expression that coincided with the migrations of fully modern humans out of Africa and into the Eurasian continent. Many consider this moment the “birth of art” among humankind— something in the biological makeup of the brain and the social stimulus of hunting migratory big game inspired our forebears to translate long-held knowledge into visual renderings of lions, horses, bears, and rhinos, often with a mastery that astonishes us even today.
Over several millennia, something more traveled from the inner mind through the artist’s hand to cave walls and rock surfaces. Along with familiar images of game animals and fearsome predators we see abstract symbols—curving lines and meanders, stars, and a stunning variety of spiral forms. The real-world inspiration for this “art” eludes our full understanding, but most agree that the capacity for abstraction was part and parcel of our ancestors’ attempts to map the natural and supernatural forces that shaped their days—whether those forces resided in the arc of a night sky or in the swirl of water descending into a deep pool. Spirals contained and organized many forms of often-imponderable power.
Thus the theme for this year, “A Galaxy of Thought.” Just as the Andromeda galaxy, featured here, contains myriad constellations, so too does SAR’s campus embrace an array of academic and artistic programs at once discrete—like individual solar systems—and composed of interrelated stars. Whether expressed in the innovative work of Kumeyaay filmmaker Cedar Sherbert or through the archaeoastronomy of Weatherhead Fellow Tim Pauketat, any given day at the School features a swirl of creative thought. Just as the gravitational forces of the cosmos bring order to chaos, so the intellectual gravity of our Schwartz Seminar House gathers the best minds among academic and artistic worlds to engage questions as fundamental as the experience of middles classes across cultures, the anxious relationship between markets and moralities, and the role of art and gender in Native American community survival.
Much of this vitality is symbolically gathered in our own “SAR spiral.” As I write, I watch the fountain spiraling in the president’s garden, recirculating water endlessly into the small pool at its end. While our scholars and artists enjoy rare respite from university affairs and the stresses of art markets, this continuous merging into a single pool—or school—of thought is our hallmark. From that source grow other dynamic constellations devoted to fulfilling our educational mission—the publications of SAR Press, our Southwest Crossroads website, our increasingly robust public lecture and field trip programs, and exciting new partnerships devoted to extending our outreach.
The fifth book in our popular Southwest archaeology series, The Great Basin: People and Place in Ancient Times,chronicles 13,000 years of human occupation in this harsh and beautiful land of deserts and oases. Vice president John Kantner continues to lead daring trips to seldom-seen archaeological and natural wonders, and collaborations with partners like UNESCO’s International Strategies for Disaster Reduction and the Dobkin Family Foundation on Women’s Global Health bring the insights of activist scholars to important audiences. Through this interweaving of programs, we achieve our mission —to advance the study and communication of human culture, evolution, history, and creative expression.
These currents of thought are enriched by the wisdom of the many disciplines represented in our creative community—ethnography, painting, history, sculpture, archaeology, sociology, and filmmaking. Please visit our website regularly so that you, too, might enjoy, if only from a distance, the wonder that is SAR.