This week, the Washington nonprofit, Artist Trust, announced Casandra Lopez, SAR’s 2013 Indigenous Writer-in-Residence, as the recipient of the 2018 James W. Ray Venture Project award. Given to two individuals annually, the award honors creatives who the Trust believes demonstrate exceptional originality.
Nearly two months after the much anticipated opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Art of Native America, the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection, the exhibit continues to welcome new visitors and receive national and international media attention. The first exhibit of Native American works in the museum’s American Wing is pushing the dialog around collecting institutions and cultural heritage into new areas of inquiry. IARC director Brian Vallo and curator Gaylord Torrence share reflections on several works in the exhibit in this video tour.
Earlier this month, the American Anthropological Association hosted the 117th annual meeting in San Jose, California. For many, the gathering is a five-day whirlwind of presentations, panels, committee meetings, awards, and social gatherings. Among the 6,000 anthropologists and related professionals in attendance, there were hundreds of SAR alumni.
With both Native Hawaiian and Chinese ancestry, Maile Andrade comes from a family of people who used their hands: her mother was a painter and a composer, her father a boat builder. “I think being an artist is something that is a gift,” she says. Explore her artistic perspective and hear about the work she produced as SAR’s 2012 Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native Artist Fellow.
The base for Gerry Quotskuyva’s Gnarly Root Project is a four-foot section of raw cottonwood root that sat in his garage drying for over a decade. Large-form sculptures are new to the Sedona, AZ, artist who was featured recently in an Albuquerque Journal article.
SAR is honored to announce that its Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) director Brian Vallo will play an integral role as a community partner in plans to renovate and reimagine the Native North American Hall at the iconic Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. Alaka Wali, the museum’s curator of North American anthropology explains in a recent announcement, “It’s not just a new exhibition—it represents a whole new way of thinking.” The revised approach involves working with community partners who will be advisors in the development of the exhibit.
Abou Farman (Anthropology, The New School) was recently at SAR as a participant in the advanced seminar “Death Culture in the 21st Century,” co-chaired by Shannon Lee Dawdy (University of Chicago) and Tamara E. Kneese (U. San Francisco). Knowing about my interest in Amazonia, Abou passed along information on a recent tragedy in Amazonian Peru that took place not far from the major city of Pucallpa.
On a recent Sunday afternoon at the Indian Arts Research Center, Pueblo weavers Aric Chopito (Zuni Pueblo) and Louie Garcia (Prio Manso Tiwa tribe of Guadalupe Pueblo) and embroiderer Isabel Gonzales (Jemez Pueblo) came together with director Brian Vallo for a guided tour of the collections. The tour followed a panel discussion with the participants for SAR members and the public about the history and revitalization of the Pueblo weaving tradition, as well as the physical, financial, and cultural struggles that these artists continue to face.
