SAR News 
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...
First SAR Centennial Medal Presented to N. Scott Momaday
On February 25, SAR President Michael F. Brown, Ph.D., presented SAR's first ever Centennial Medal to author N. Scott Momaday for distinguished service to SAR and the world. The award was presented during the SAR board reception at the La Fonda Hotel. Momaday was a...
Hugh Raffles Named 2023 Winner of J.I. Staley Prize
SAR is pleased to announce that Hugh Raffles, Professor and Anthropology Department Chair at the New School for Social Research, has been named winner of the 2023 J. I. Staley Prize for The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time (New York: Verse Chorus...
Twelve Tips for Item Care in Your Home
By Laura Elliff Cruz, Collections Manager, Indian Arts Research Center, School for Advanced Research After teaching an SAR member class in early December, Caring for Your Personal Collections at Home: An Introduction to Collections Care, I realized how busy everyday...
Accolades for the Landmark Exhibition Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery
On July 31 this year Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery opened in Santa Fe at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. The exhibition, curated by the Pueblo Pottery Collective and organized by the School for Advanced Research and the Vilcek Foundation, has...
SAR Artist Alumnus Co-Curates Important Exhibition of Native American Photography
Will Wilson, the Santa Fe-based Navajo photographer and 2013 Rollin and Mary Ella King Artist Fellow at SAR, has co-curated a major exhibition of contemporary Native American photography at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. The...
Lives and Afterlives: Reflections on the 2022 Resident Scholar Colloquium Series
Written by Paul Ryer, Scholar Programs Director With the end of Robert Weiner’s compelling presentation about the roads of Chaco Canyon on December 14, we successfully concluded SAR’s 2022 Resident Scholar colloquium series. Using the format we have evolved over the...
2022 Staley Prize Awarded to J. Lorand Matory at Duke University
On November 3, 2022, SAR President Michael F. Brown presented the 2022 J.I. Staley Prize to J. Lorand Matory, Duke University, at an event in Durham, North Carolina, hosted by Duke's School of Arts & Sciences. Matory is the Lawrence Richardson Distinguished...
Film Day Rewind
Written by Paloma López, Educator, Indian Arts Research Center Sunday, November 6 was Film Day at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture (MIAC). The School for Advanced Research (SAR) and MIAC teamed up for a day of screenings, panels, and demonstrations in...
President’s Circle Annual Winter Party: Fireside Chat
On a cold and rainy December night, the School for Advanced Research (SAR) welcomed sixty members of the President’s Circle, Legacy Circle, and Board of Directors to join President Michael F. Brown for the first in-person annual winter party in three years. Guests were greeted by a warm fire on the patio before they joined the festivities in the Eric S. Dobkin Boardroom, transformed with red roses, juniper berries, and ambient piano music by Melanie Monsour. Guests enjoyed mulled wine, hot apple cider, wine and beer, a champagne toast, as well as elegant antipasto and charcuterie platters by Walter Burke Catering.
Another New Resident Scholar Book: Undocumented Saints
Did you know that La Santa Muerte ("Saint Death") is worshipped by some residents of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands? Likewise Santa Olguita, a feminist saint associated with border women's experience of sexual violence? These and other emerging folk saints are the...
In Memoriam: Pat Courtney Gold (1939-2022)
Very recently, we received news that 2009 Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native Artist Fellow Pat Courtney Gold passed away on July 11, 2022. Pat, a Wasco basketmaker, grew up on the Warm Springs Reservation in the mid-Columbia River area of central Oregon. In her youth, she...
SAR Alumna Publishes Award-Winning Book on Community & Ethnic Change in South Central L.A.
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo (Sociology, USC), a 2017-2018 Weatherhead Fellow, was recently honored for a book written during her time at SAR. South Central Dreams: Finding Home and Building Community in South L.A. (NYU Press), co-authored with Manuel Pastor, is a...
A Whirlwind Tour of Okla Homma
New Directions: An Insider’s Look at Native American Collections SAR President's Circle members embarked on a five-day tour of Oklahoma and Arkansas in mid-October. Okla Homma, which means “red people” in Chickasaw and Choctaw, is home to thirty-nine tribes, including...
“Footprints from White Sands” Webinar Enormously Popular
View the video recording here The Creative Thought Forum Linda S. Cordell Lecture was conducted online this year resulting in live event viewership from 360 computer, tablet, and smartphone screens. Add to that the over 700 views of the recorded video on SAR's YouTube...