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
Blog by Michael F. Brown, President, SAR 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...
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...
Barbara H. Tedlock, 1942-2023
The School for Advanced Research is sad to report news of the death of long-time SAR supporter Barbara H. Tedlock on September 11, 2023, in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
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...
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)...
SAR welcomes 2023 William Y. and Nettie K. Adams Fellow Christopher Nelson
The School for Advanced Research is delighted to welcome our first post-pandemic Adams Fellow in the History of Anthropology, University of North Carolina Professor of Anthropology Christopher T. Nelson. While at SAR, Dr. Nelson will prepare an annotated translation...
Crossing Between Worlds and Generations: SAR Visits Canyon de Chelly
Lupita McClanahan guides SAR members down the White House Trail, Canyon de Chelly. Blog by Jeanne Simonelli, SAR Study Guide, Canyon de Chelly 2023 As we drove along Interstate 40 everything looked to me like the outskirts of Gallup. To be driving to Canyon de Chelly...
SAR Honored for Architectural Stewardship by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation
In a public award event held at San Miguel Chapel on May 18, the School for Advanced Research received the Historic Santa Fe Foundation's 2023 Preservation Award for the extensive renovation work on its historic El Delirio campus completed over the past three years....
2023 Native Arts Speaker Series Wrap-Up
By Paloma Lopez, Educator, Indian Arts Research Center, School for Advanced Research The 2023 Native Arts Speaker Series, Grounded in Clay Conversations, has ended. This year we partnered with the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) to host three events over four...
SAR Announces 2023-2024 Native Artist Fellows
SAR Announces 2023-2024 Native American Artist Fellows: Heidi Brandow, Michael Namingha, and Carly Feddersen.
The Breath We Leave: SAR Literary Day 2023
It was the kind of morning best spent in a worn chair next to a lamp reading a good book. Rain pelted at the roof. Its percussive rhythms accompanied the lulling language of Fray Angélico Chávez who wrote: “The angel had simply vanished, slipped out of his hand the way sparrows or trout usually do, only much more swiftly.” Huddled around a broad table, fingers warmed by mugs of coffee and tea, we were in the Reception Center at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) listening to the first three short stories in Fray Angélico Chávez’s “New Mexico Triptych.” Published in 1940, the beloved Franciscan padre born in Wagon Mound, NM created his own illustrations. In 1938 and 1939, he read his poetry aloud at the White Sisters’ “Chapel.” On May 19, 2023, in honor of the second annual Santa Fe International Literary Festival, twenty-four tour guests learned about the literary connections at SAR as an organization, a collection, and a place.
Three New Mexico Organizations Join Together to Host the Twelfth Annual Pueblo Fiber Arts Show Memorial Day Weekend
The New Mexico Pueblo Fiber Arts Guild, in collaboration with the Poeh Cultural Center and School for Advanced Research (SAR), is pleased to announce the Twelfth Annual Pueblo Fiber Arts Show on Saturday, May 27, 2023, from 9 a.m.–4 p.m. The show will take place at...
Worried about the impact of AI? SAR was ahead of the curve.
[Featured image courtesy of Mike MacKenzie, https://www.vpnsrus.com/, and Wikimedia Commons] Various SAR members have suggested that SAR bring to Santa Fe an expert to talk about the possibilities and risks of deploying artificial intelligence (AI). We're working on...
SAR Member Trip to Glorieta Pass and Pecos National Historical Park
By Melinda Sue Robbins, Grants Manager, School for Advanced ResearchOn the morning of May 3, 20-plus SAR members began a guided excursion to Glorieta Pass and Pecos National Historical Park. The day began at SAR’s Dobkin Boardroom with a presentation by historian...
Donor Profile: The Susan L. Q. Flaherty Collection
The acquisition of the Susan L. Q. Flaherty Collection is a rare and exceptional example of a collection donation that the IARC was able to acquire due to its uniqueness and story. The gifted collection allows the IARC to further demonstrate the multigenerational nature of pottery making that goes beyond what already exists in the IARC collection.
SAR Welcomes Two New Board Members
The School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is pleased to welcome two new members to its board of directors: Larry Colton and Ed Gale. President Michael F. Brown describes these additions to the board as evidence of SAR’s ongoing commitment to recruiting directors who bring the widest possible range of life experiences and professional accomplishments to the organization’s leadership team.
2023 Eric and Barbara Dobkin Fellow Janna Avner Works with Light
Written by Olivia Amaya Ortiz. Koyukon Athabascan creative, Janna Avner (she/her), joins the SAR Native Artist Fellowship community as its first practicing light artist. Using light as her primary medium, Avner seeks to reclaim romanticizations of landscape imagery...
Reflections on the Origin of a Dangerous Concept
On April 13 and 14, 2023, SAR hosted two events focused on the invention of the concept of race in eighteenth-century Europe and its implications. The conversation was led by noted Harvard faculty member and PBS personality Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and his colleague...