SAR News 
SAR Launches SAR Impacts: A New Video Series and Members-Only Conversations with Scholars and Artists
The School for Advanced Research is now highlighting the stories of its scholars and artists in a whole new way. SAR Impacts is a new video series that explores the work of one scholar or artist and showcases its impact and relevance to our world today. “The work of...
“It’s a conversation”: The President’s Circle Field Trip to Los Angeles
Trip participants hear from Amy Gusick, associate curator of anthropology, during a behind-the-scenes tour of the collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Photo by Kitty Leaken. “I love museums, and I love getting back behind the...
Former SAR Scholar Carla Sinopoli Highlights Museums’ Contribution during Current Health Crisis
Former SAR Weatherhead fellow and director of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Carla Sinopoli shares some of the ways she and her staff are supporting patrons during the pandemic and discusses the importance of museums at this time.
New Mexico in a Time of Influenza
SAR Scholar-In-Residence, Nancy Owen Lewis, author of Chasing the Cure in New Mexico: Tuberculosis and the Quest for Health, shares a guest post exploring the impact of the 1918 flu in New Mexico and lessons to be learned within the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Lessons from the Delhi Metro with Rashmi Sadana
Dr. Rashmi Sadana, this year’s Weatherhead fellows at SAR. discusses her project, Gender, Urban Space, and Everyday Life in the Age of the Delhi Metro, 2002–2018 exploring how the metro affects the nearly three million people who use it and how women and men of different classes interact in its newly created spaces.
SAR Press Top Reads: 2019–2020 Resident Scholar Picks
A selection of this year’s resident scholars—who study everything from ancient drinking practices in Chaco Canyon to the newly built Delhi metro—have recommended the SAR Press books they find most useful, thought provoking, or even just enjoyable. We hope you enjoy them, too.
SAR Announces 2020-2021 Native American Artist Fellows
SAR Announces 2019-2020 Native American Artist Fellows: Mikayla Patton, Venancio Aragon, and Neebinnaukzhik Southall.
SAR Curated. Building the Indian Arts Research Center
In 1977 Doug Schwartz, who was then the president of SAR, hired Art Wolf to be the curator of collections. Wolf’s task was to oversee the building of the facility that would become the IARC, which now stewards a collection of nearly 12,000 artworks.
Staying Connected
In addition to canceling, postponing, or livestreaming our in-person public programs until April 30, we have reluctantly decided to close the SAR campus to the public until further notice.
We understand that your mailboxes are flooded with messages about responses to Covid-19 and it can seem overwhelming. But now is a good time to reflect and find new ways to engage with one another. So we can’t engage in-person? Let’s connect from home. Here are several ways you can continue to be part of the SAR community from afar.
From SAR Press: Bioinsecurity and Vulnerability
SAR Press is now offering a free download of our 2014 Bioinsecurity and Vulnerability. In times of crisis, we rely on experts to help us make decisions and understand the impacts of those decisions. In the coming weeks and months, as we try to make sense of the Coronavirus and its spread, we will be looking not only to epidemiologists and doctors, but also to anthropologists, sociologists, and others who can provide insight into the social and historical dimensions of the outbreak.
2020 J.I. Staley Prize Awarded to a Powerful Examination of Life, Death, and Care, among Inuit Communities.
Lisa Stevenson’s Life Beside Itself examines two historical moments among the Inuit of northern Canada: a tuberculosis epidemic in the mid-twentieth century and an epidemic of suicides among Inuit youth today. Through richly textured analysis, Stevenson shows how suicide prevention programs disregard what makes life worthwhile to Inuit people. Life Beside Itself deftly weaves together ethnography, archival voice recordings, and images to raise new questions about life, death, and care.
New from SAR Press: Walling In and Walling Out
In the latest Advanced Seminar volume from SAR Press, co-editors Laura McAtackney and Randall McGuire ask a timely question: Why are we building new barriers to divide us? Walling In and Walling Out brings together scholars from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, city and regional planning, geography, and Latino and Caribbean studies to investigate examples of wall building around the world, past and present.
SAR Press Top Reads: Chaco Canyon
From excavations of Chaco in the early nineteenth century to the latest research on cosmology, monumental architecture, and long-distance trade, SAR has supported scholars who wish to understand and protect this unique place—and shared their findings with other researchers and the public.
From Within: IARC Arts Program Aims to Empower Incarcerated Youth
Santa Fe’s Youth Development Program houses incarcerated youth from Santa Fe and surrounding areas, many of whom come from Native American communities. As stewards of important cultural works, the School for Advanced Research’s Indian Arts Research Center has developed a program that enables the education staff to facilitate art activities with these youth. Open until February 7, 2020, From Within, shares the work that has been created created out of this partnership.
For IARC Education Department, Native American Community Connections Matter
For Felicia Garcia, SAR’s new curator of education at the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC), one of the most exciting reasons to be at SAR is a proven dedication to community that drives much of the work at the IARC. We spoke with Felicia about what makes the IARC unique, the importance of land acknowledgement practices, and how the education department fits within the organization. Listen to the full interview and explore highlighted excerpts.
IARC Speaker Series Explores Indigenous-Based Cultural Preservation
SAR is proud to present a series of conversation-style presentations exploring today’s world of cultural preservation. This year’s IARC speaker series takes us on a journey beyond the Pueblo communities within which we are situated, to shed light on the many remarkable ways indigenous-based cultural preservation is happening nationally.
Celebrating SAR Press at AAA
For the first time, SAR Press participated in the AAA’s Celebration of Authors, and hosted a book signing that featured our most recent publications.
Chaco Landscapes: Sensory and Political Engagements with Place
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is pleased to announce the next event in our third annual Creative Thought Forum Series. Archaeologist Ruth Van Dyke presents Chaco Landscapes: Sensory and Political Engagements with Place. In her talk she shares insights into past and present social, political, and sensorial relationships across the greater Chaco landscape. She explores how archaeologists can work together with Native peoples to influence the public understanding of contemporary economic/extractive projects, including those in northwest New Mexico.
Border Land, Border Water: A Conversation with C. J. Alvarez
While in residence at SAR, C. J. Alvarez is working on a history of the Chihuahuan Desert that considers this area as an ecosystem rather than a political territory along a border. As we talked, I learned more about his new environmental history of the border region and what he’s gaining from his time in Santa Fe.
SAR Impacts: The Psychology of Patriarchy
In a world where conversations are becoming more polarized, how do we find common ground? Regardless of where you stand, we face a crisis around the issue of public dialogue. “SAR is a unique place in that it allows intellectualism to breathe. We’re trying to build a society where complex ideas can be discussed and exchanged. Complex issues need creativity to percolate in order to be solved in our fast-paced world.” — Adriana M. Manago, co-chair of The Psychology of Patriarchy advanced seminar. Learn more about the 2015 seminar and the subsequent 2019 SAR Press publication.
A Gift to Future Scholars: Bequest Ensures Schwartz Seminar House Improvements
Since 1968, SAR’s seminar programs have given time and space to groups of scholars working together to push intellectual and academic boundaries. This year, SAR received a bequest to fund improvements to the Schwartz Seminar House where we host our advanced, short, and research team seminars. Learn more about the life of Pat Kuhlhoff and the programs her generous gift supports.
A Sunny Studio Fosters Creativity
Two decades ago, with a vision of a space for artists that would elicit feelings of warmth and personality, SAR commissioned a new artist studio. The Native American artist fellowship program—then in its fourth year—needed a space more conducive to artistic creativity. The Dubin Studio was built adjacent to the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) through the generosity of Ronald and Susan Dubin. Learn more about SAR’s two most recent contemporary Native American artist fellows and the Dubin Studio’s continued legacy of supporting artists through the open working space.
Anne Ray Intern Reflects on ATALM: An Enriching Indigenous Experience
Erin Monique Grant, SAR’s 2019 Anne Ray Intern, reports on the 12th Annual International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums hosted in Temecula, California. Grant shares her experiences and reflects on the events that included a keynote address by US poet laureate Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek Nation).
Guidelines for Collaboration: IARC Leads National Trend in Collaborative Museum Work
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is pleased to announce the publication of the Guidelines for Collaboration, theoretical and practical guides to building successful collaborations between Indigenous communities, museums, and other collecting institutions. The Guidelines are the product of several years of critical discourse between over sixty Native and non-Native museum professionals, cultural leaders, artists, and scholars experienced in collaborative work in various institutions in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Available only in limited release until now, the Guidelines are already being used by internationally recognized institutions including Chicago’s Field Museum and University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) in collaboration with the Getty Conservation Institute.
SAR Senior Scholar Dean Falk Featured in Nature on Australopithecus Africanus: The Man-Ape of South Africa
SAR senior scholar Dean Falk has contributed a piece to the journal Nature on South African physical anthropologist and paleontologist Raymond Dart.
SAR’s eMuseum: An Interview with IARC Registrar Jennifer Day
Parts of the IARC’s extensive collection of Southwestern Native art are now accessible through SAR’s eMuseum, which Day was instrumental in creating. As we talked, she told me about the collections review process that contributed to the development of eMuseum.
Enjoying the Conversation: IARC Native Artist Fellow Jeffrey Gibson
A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and also of Cherokee descent, Jeffrey Gibson was SAR’s 2008 Ronald and Susan Dubin Native artist fellow and is now a MacArthur fellow, the winner of one of the “genius” grants given annually by the MacArthur Foundation.
Listen to the Introductory Presentations by SAR’s 2019 Resident Scholars, Interns, and King Native Artist Fellow
SAR Announces 2019-2020 Resident Scholars: C.J. Alvarez, Patricia Crown, Rashmi Sadana, Fátima Suárez, and Davina Two Bears.
“Indians Welcome”: Former SAR Resident Scholar Explores the Alcatraz Takeover of 1969
As a young Native scholar I’d studied Native activism and Red Power and got involved in activism; one of the names that stood out in the back of my mind, the person I’d always wanted to know more about, was Richard Oakes.
White Paper “Aging in Place: Challenges and Prospects”
“Aging in place” is a common phrase meaning that older people prefer to age (most frequently through the end of their lives) in their homes, in spaces that represent their lives, and ideally close to family and friends. This white paper is the result of a salon held at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) that took place on June 6, 2019, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was generously sponsored by the Ethel-Jane Westfeldt Bunting Foundation.