SAR Curated is a series on the SAR blog exploring the collections, archives, campus, and institutional history. In this edition, the SAR Press acquisitions editor highlights the bust of Martha White that can be seen on SAR’s historic campus.
Exploring the world of death and mourning has always been part of anthropological work, but the opportunity to examine these topics in an interdisciplinary setting is rare in academia. This fall, SAR hosted an Advanced Seminar that enabled a cross-disciplinary dialogue among ten scholars who are currently studying death practices and their cultural relevance.
Nearly two months after the much anticipated opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Art of Native America, the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection, the exhibit continues to welcome new visitors and receive national and international media attention. The first exhibit of Native American works in the museum’s American Wing is pushing the dialog around collecting institutions and cultural heritage into new areas of inquiry. IARC director Brian Vallo and curator Gaylord Torrence share reflections on several works in the exhibit in this video tour.
Earlier this month, the American Anthropological Association hosted the 117th annual meeting in San Jose, California. For many, the gathering is a five-day whirlwind of presentations, panels, committee meetings, awards, and social gatherings. Among the 6,000 anthropologists and related professionals in attendance, there were hundreds of SAR alumni.
With both Native Hawaiian and Chinese ancestry, Maile Andrade comes from a family of people who used their hands: her mother was a painter and a composer, her father a boat builder. “I think being an artist is something that is a gift,” she says. Explore her artistic perspective and hear about the work she produced as SAR’s 2012 Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native Artist Fellow.
For SAR’s 2018-2019 Mellon Fellow John Arroyo, the hotly contested gubernatorial race in Georgia is more than just a news story passing through his feed. Since July 2016, Arroyo, the MIT-trained urban planner, has been visiting Gwinnett County, Georgia, and researching Mexican immigrant experiences in the region. Arroyo’s timely ethnographic research illustrates the importance of new perspectives based on interdisciplinary research that bridges urban planning with migration studies, Latinx studies, and urban sociology.
SAR Curated is a series on the SAR blog exploring the collections, archives, campus, and institutional history. In this edition, the SAR Press acquisition editor highlights a map of the historic campus created by artist Gustave Baumann in the 1920s for the original owners, Elizabeth and Martha White. The map now hangs in SAR’s administration building and visitors can see the piece on campus tours. Schedule a tour by calling 505.954.7200.
William Calvo-Quirós, one of SAR’s 2018-2019 Mellon Fellows, was one of three Americans invited to join 230 global participants in the World Conference on Xenophobia, Racism, and Populist Nationalism in the Context of Global Migration.
Abou Farman (Anthropology, The New School) was recently at SAR as a participant in the advanced seminar “Death Culture in the 21st Century,” co-chaired by Shannon Lee Dawdy (University of Chicago) and Tamara E. Kneese (U. San Francisco). Knowing about my interest in Amazonia, Abou passed along information on a recent tragedy in Amazonian Peru that took place not far from the major city of Pucallpa.
On a recent Sunday afternoon at the Indian Arts Research Center, Pueblo weavers Aric Chopito (Zuni Pueblo) and Louie Garcia (Prio Manso Tiwa tribe of Guadalupe Pueblo) and embroiderer Isabel Gonzales (Jemez Pueblo) came together with director Brian Vallo for a guided tour of the collections. The tour followed a panel discussion with the participants for SAR members and the public about the history and revitalization of the Pueblo weaving tradition, as well as the physical, financial, and cultural struggles that these artists continue to face.