SAR News 
Farewell Statement by President Michael F. Brown
Several years ago, I alerted our board of directors of my intention to retire after ten years as SAR’s twelfth president. I am now on the cusp of that milestone. Leading SAR has been a privilege and the pinnacle of my career as an anthropologist and educator. One thing I’ve learned over a long career, however, is that institutions need new leadership at regular intervals to meet the challenges of a changing world. That’s why I chose to step down now.
Celebrating the Past to Support the Future: SAR Gala Honors Fifty Years of Resident Scholar Fellows and Ten Years of Michael Brown’s Presidency
Honoring both fifty years of Resident Scholar Fellows and ten years of Michael F. Brown’s presidency at the School for Advanced Research (SAR), 105 of SAR’s esteemed supporters, board members, and friends gathered together in the newly named Michael F. Brown Plaza for a celebratory evening of bidding, buying, dining, and mingling on the evening of June 8, 2024. Guests remarked on the convivial atmosphere ripe with merriment and good cheer. Embraced by the warm summer air, the Gala unfolded with effortless fluidity, raising an unexpected $280,000 for future educational programming and scholarship.
2023-2024 SAR Mellon Fellow Derek Xavier Garcia Engages with the Rio Grande Valley of Texas Through the Lens of Colegio Jacinto Treviño: the First Mexican-American Institute of Higher Learning
Derek Xavier Garcia’s work is living and active. Not only does he interview members of the community for his dissertation and future book, he engages with them, bringing history to life in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
Tiya Miles and Ned Blackhawk Remember Residencies and Impact on Each Other
So far, two SAR Resident Scholar Fellows have won the National Book Award: Tiya Miles in 2021 for her book All that She Carried: the Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake and Ned Blackhawk in 2023 for The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. Recently, they took a moment from their very busy schedules to share a little about their residency experiences at SAR, how they impacted their lives, and also a few words about how they influenced each other.
Santa Clara Sibling Scholars Studied the Transformation of a Gendered Pueblo World
In 1996, the Resident Scholar Program at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) did something it had not done before and hasn’t since. Three sibling scholars shared the Katrin H. Lamon fellowship: Rina Swentzell, Tessie Naranjo, and Tito Naranjo from Santa Clara Pueblo.
Remembering J. J. Brody and Duane Anderson
In the past few weeks, SAR lost two important friends and accomplished scholars, J.J. Brody and Duane C. Anderson. Both played important roles in SAR’s history.
Tim A. Kohler, Global Pattern Thinking in Archaeology
1986-87 Weatherhead Fellows, Timothy A. Kohler and Carla M. Sinopoli. Photo courtesy of the School for Advanced Research. In celebration of fifty years of resident scholars at SAR, we are publishing a series of posts about the program and scholars over the years....
Weaving Worlds with Words – the Collaborative Life of Dennis and Barbara Tedlock
There’s one couple who essentially “book-end” the scholars in that group from 1973 and to the 2000s: Barbara and Dennis Tedlock. They were poet scholars. Both taught poetry in addition to anthropology. Both wrote their own poetry and participated in literary readings. Their mission was to “expand and alter the ways in which anthropologists conduct and communicate their work,” expressed in just that way in the preface to the first issue of the American Anthropologist, which they edited as a husband and wife team from 1994-1998.
School for Advanced Research Awards Residential Fellowships to Three Native Artists
Santa Fe, New Mexico—The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024–2025 Native Artist Fellowships: Kevin Aspaas (Navajo), Lynda Teller Pete (Navajo), and Sheridan MacKnight (White Earth Chippewa, Hunkpapa Lakota). Each year...
The First Three Resident Scholar Fellows at SAR
The first three Weatherhead resident scholar fellows on the new campus of the School of American Research in 1974. Left to right: Edwin L. Wade (1973-5), Joann W. Kealiinohomoku (1974-5), Earl Wesley Jernigan (1974-6). Photo courtesy of the School for Advanced...
SAR Board of Directors Announces Appointment of Morris W. Foster as Next SAR President
When Michael F. Brown accepted the role as president for the School for Advanced Research in 2014, he committed to leading the institution for ten years. True to his word, last fall Dr. Brown announced his retirement effective July 2024, ending a tenure of exceptional...
Dream to Reality: Beginnings of the Resident Scholar Program at SAR
Finding and fostering a place for scholars to live, study, and write in community was the dream of Douglas Schwartz. When he visited the School of American Research (SAR) in the fall of 1966 as “program consultant,” Schwartz was so sure he would remain in his tenured anthropology position at the University of Kentucky…
Three SAR Alumni in the National News
Both Ned Blackhawk (Katrin Lamon Fellow, 1996-1997; SAR Board of Directors 2017-2023) and Tiya Miles (SAR Fellow, 2007-2008) have been named 2024 Guggenheim Fellows. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awards these fellowships annually to “exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.”
SAR Welcomes New Board Directors
Over the past six months, the School for Advanced Research (SAR) Board of Directors appointed eight new Board and Advisory Board members. They bring experience in scholarship, language, marketing, development, social change programs, art history, writing and...
School for Advanced Research Awards the 2024 J. I. Staley Prize to T. M. Luhrmann for “How God Becomes Real”
Top Prize in Scholarship and Writing in Anthropology Awarded for Book That “Shows How Faith Is ‘Kindled’, or Intentionally Brought into Being” Santa Fe, New Mexico—The School for Advanced Research is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2024 J. I. Staley Prize:...
N. Scott Momaday, 1934–2024
Navarre Scott Momaday, the nation's most celebrated Native American writer, died at his home in Santa Fe on January 24. He was 89. Momaday, a member of the Kiowa Tribe, is remembered at SAR for his long service to this institution: as a Katrin Lamon Resident Scholar,...
SAR Receives $900,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
Image: Collections review with the Pueblo of Acoma at the Indian Arts Research Center The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is honored to announce that it has been awarded a grant in the amount of $900,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The...
2024: A Look Ahead
New Year's festivities inevitably include reviews of the year that's winding down. For SAR's first blog post of 2024, I prefer to pivot toward the near future. Although some details have yet to fall into place, I’m pleased to identify highlights of our programming for...
Grounded in Clay Reception at The Met, New York
Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery Reception at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 10, 2023. All photos courtesy of The Met. Credit: Paula Lobo.New Mexico proud! Members of the Pueblo Pottery Collective and their families, as well as SAR staff and...
SAR Produces Podcasts
The School for Advanced Research is now producing podcasts starting with stories from Grounded in Clay curators. The Grounded in Clay Podcast has launched on the PodBean platform. Episodes, which are free to stream or download, are available there and on Apple...
Inaugural Humanities Festival Raises a New Profile for SAR
The Santa Fe New Mexican noted SAR’s “broader and more vigorous approach” to programming when SAR launched its new Humanities Festival in September. The Humanities Festival: American Identities was a micro-festival illuminating diverse American experiences through lectures, music, film, and discussion. A special SAR hallmark of these events was the moderated community conversations hosted by SAR President Michael F. Brown.
Saluting Kindness in the World
About eighteen minutes outside of Gallup on the first day of SAR’s recent field trip to Canyon de Chelly, our luxury coach bus glided gracefully to the shoulder of Highway 264 and then proceeded to power down. None of the attempted ministrations could coax it back to life. The diagnosis of a faulty fuse didn’t come until later, but it was clear the vehicle was going nowhere.
SAR Alumna Tiya Miles Interviewed for the New York Times Book Review
An interview of Tiya Miles (History, Harvard), an SAR resident scholar in 2007-2008, appeared in the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" section on October 15. In the interview, Miles describes her childhood passion for reading: "Reading became my escape and...
SAR Receives Major Grant from National Park Service for Initiatives to Repatriate Cultural Items
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) has been awarded a grant in the amount of $88,799 from the National Park Service (NPS) for a project that will have the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) collaborating with consultants from the Pueblo of Acoma and Pueblo of Tesuque to identify items in SAR’s Acoma and Tesuque Pueblo collections that are subject to compliance with the North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The two-year project will result in the return of the identified items to the source communities, and the culturally appropriate housing, handling, documentation, and access for the items that remain at the IARC.
Over Thirty Past SAR Artist Fellows Show Work at the 2023 Santa Fe Indian Market
Max Early at the 2019 Santa Fe Indian Market.It's been 101 years since the School of American Research (SAR) coordinated the first Santa Fe Indian Market, then called the Southwest Indian Fair. SAR encourages you to attend the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts...
In the House that Jack Built
The heat promised to be oppressive in the courtyard of the house that Jack built. Yet there was hope as guests stepped off the shuttle to receive a warm greeting by President’s Circle Chair and host Ken Stilwell, who honored the legacy of Jack Lambert by wearing a white collared shirt, dress jeans, and a ranch hat. Dark clouds gathered, providing relief from the sun during The Dude Wrangler, the Lady Archaeologist, and Martha’s Corrals President’s Circle event on July 26, 2023 from 4-6 pm.
SAR Awarded Over $225,000 by Institute for Museum and Library Services
SAR’s Indian Arts Research Center Receives Funding for Projects That Support Indigenous Collections Care. August 3, 2023, Santa Fe, New Mexico—The School for Advanced Research has been awarded two grants by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for initiatives by SAR’s Indian Arts Research Center (IARC).
Grounded in Clay Exhibition Debuts in New York
Blog by Helen Brooks, Director, Leadership Giving, School for Advanced Research July 13 dawned hot and steamy in New York City, but that didn’t stop a small SAR delegation from hanging out on Fifth Avenue to admire the giant Grounded in Clay banner that had just been...
New Standards for Museums with Native American Collections (SMNAC) Now Available
Image: SMNAC Core Group meeting in 2019. Photo by Elysia Poon, courtesy School for Advanced ResearchNew Document Calls for Equitable Partnership Between Museums and Native CommunitiesToday, the School for Advanced Research (SAR) and the American Alliance of Museums...
Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) Guide
By Laura Elliff Cruz, Collections ManagerHistorically, museums and academic institutions have acquired and amassed Indigenous cultural items for their own use and benefit with minimal consideration from descendant communities. The Indigenous Collections Care (ICC)...