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...
Reflections on Grounded in Clay Opening Weekend
It is mid-morning Friday in Santa Fe: sun blaring and the air is thin, I often think that we are so close to the sky that maybe I could touch the clouds myself. At the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC), white tents are erected in the courtyard, awaiting people...
Introducing 2022-2023 Anne Ray Intern Penske McCormack
Hello all! I am Penske McCormack (they/them), and I am one of the two Anne Ray Interns at SAR's Indian Arts Research Center for 2022-2023. I am very excited to introduce myself to the SAR community! Raised in Georgia, I earned my AB in art history from the University...
Introducing 2022-2023 Anne Ray Intern Wayne Nez Gaussoin
Hi! I am Wayne Nez Gaussoin (Picuris/Diné/French descent), and I'm one of the 2022-2023 Anne Ray Interns at the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC). I have a background as a professional artist with over twenty years of experience. I received a Masters of Fine Arts...
Seeking Shade and Strata: A Stroll Through SAR’s Ever-Evolving Campus Tour
Guest post by Emily Santhanam, 2020-2021 Anne Ray Intern I arrived mid-morning at the Reception Center, the summer sun already high and bright. It had been a few months since I’d last visited campus, and over a year since I’d lived there as an Anne Ray intern....
SAR Members Tour Chaco Canyon and Related Sites
Chaco Canyon and the so-called "Chaco Phenomenon" have long evoked intense interest among SAR members. Our more-or-less annual tradition of Chaco field trips continued in mid-August, when fourteen members and SAR staff spent three days visiting Chaco, Salmon Ruins,...
SAR Board Member Appointed to Cultural Property Advisory Committee by President Biden
Alex W. Barker, who joined the SAR board of directors in August, has been appointed by President Biden to the federal government's Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC). Barker, who currently serves as director of the Arkansas Archaeological Survey, is a former...
Celebrating 100 Years of Santa Fe’s Indian Market
The School for American Research (SAR) started the Santa Fe Indian Market one hundred years ago this September. SAR’s first director, Edgar Lee Hewett, spearheaded the effort and printed a statement in the Santa Fe New Mexican on June 27, 1922. He wrote, “The objects of the exhibition are the encouragement of Native arts; to revive old arts, and to keep the arts of each tribe and pueblo as distinct as possible; the establishment and locating of markets for all Indian products; the securing of reasonable prices; authenticity of all handicraft offered for sale.” The first of its kind, the Southwest Indian Fair featured artists across seven states, and included Julian and Maria Martinez, the celebrated potters of San Ildefonso Pueblo, who won a substantial monetary prize for their work.
‘Who Were You When You Stepped to This Pot?’ :
‘Who Were You When You Stepped to This Pot?’1: A Lesson in Community Curation from Grounded in Clay Guest post by Emily SanthanamConsider when and where you’ve seen Pueblo pottery in a museum. How was it displayed? Who wrote the label? What did it tell you about the...
SAR Alumna Op-Ed on Wildfires and Climate Change is Published in Los Angeles Times
Adriana Petryna, professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and an SAR summer scholar in 2014, published an op-ed essay in the July 10, 2022, issue of the Los Angeles Times that builds on her recent book, Horizon Work: At the Edges of Knowledge in an...
Forging Her Path: Dr. Adriana María Linares-Palma, 2021-2022 Paloheimo Fellow
Written by Kat Bernhardt, Advancement Associate, SAR With her sparkling dark eyes and guarded genuine smile, there is a big-hearted openness about Dr. Adriana María Linares-Palma, 2021-2022 Paloheimo Fellow in residence at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in...
Centennial of the Indian Arts Research Center Collections: Gala Dinner and Auction
Thunder and light rain did not keep 100 stalwart gala guests from descending the stone steps to enter a white-tented world where they were warmly welcomed by enchanting floral tablescapes, bird songs of a flute, and handcrafted works by Native American artists for the Centennial Celebration of the Indian Arts Research Center collections at the School for Advanced Research on Saturday, June 18, 2022.
Reflections on SAR’s “Seeking Justice” Webinar Series
On June 2 SAR held the sixth and final webinar in this year's Creative Thought Forum series called Seeking Justice: Toward a More Equitable America, which launched in February. The series was primarily funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities, with support...
SAR Member Trip to Bears Ears, Utah
After a long pandemic-related hiatus, SAR relaunched member field trips on May 13 with a four-day journey to Bears Ears in Utah. Given the scale of this new national monument—more than 2100 square miles—we couldn't possibly do justice to its diverse mesas, canyons,...
SAR Board Member John Arroyo Wins Whiting Fellowship
SAR's academic board members continue to win major fellowships focused on innovative work in the public policy arena. John Arroyo, a recent SAR-Mellon Foundation Latinx Resident Scholar and now a member of SAR's board of directors, has been named a 2022-2023 Public...
Noting the Loss of Two Significant SAR supporters
We are sorry to report the passing of two longtime SAR supporters. Benjamin F. Crane, a distinguished New York attorney who served on the SAR board of directors from 2005 until 2015, died in Brooklyn on February 18 at the age of 92. Ben and his wife Sally, who...
Moments in Places in Time
Growing up in the middle of Alaska, there was a window to another world on the wall of my living room. It was like no place I’d ever seen. There was a church that seemed to be made of clay pinched together by someone’s fingers. And there was a woman with a flared skirt, shawl, and scarf over her head. No one dressed like that in Alaska. I enjoyed stepping back to where it appeared to be a photograph or passage to another land and then move slowly forward to find just that point when the optical illusion fell away and I could see the leaves, the moss, the bark.