By Airplane to Pygmyland

It has already been blogged on by the folks at Savage Minds, but I wanted to note the appearance of By Aeroplane to Pygmyland: Revisiting the 1926 Dutch and American Expedition to New Guinea. The site is described in the current issue of Inside Smithsonian Research (p. 12) which is a good old fashioned paper publication on research in the museums of the Smithsonian. The project inaugurates a series called Smithsonian Libraries Digital Editions: Sources and Critical Interpretations. The site features interpretive essays by Paul Taylor contextualizing the expedition along with documents from the expedition, including diaries, 700+ photographs and two hours of film footage.

CFP: Women and Things: Material Culture, 1750-1950

From an e-mail circulated on H-Material Culture:

Women and Things: Material Culture, 1750-1950

Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin, editors

Although the body is both object (for others) and a lived reality (for the subject), it is never simply object nor simply subject. It is defined by its relation with objects and in turn defines these objects as such.
--Maurice Merleau-Ponty

We invite proposals for essays for a collection titled Women and Things: Material Culture, 1750-1950. This collection invites scholars to consider women's engagement with the material world, from the most ordinary, mundane daily practices and objects to the most extraordinary, life-altering practices and objects, over the two-hundred-year period of 1750 to1950.

Since material culture encompasses all human-made objects, the possibility of topics is wide open so long as they connect women to things. Therefore, topics might include, but are certainly not limited to: fiber arts (needlework, quilting, knitting, crocheting); decorative
arts; other kinds of crafts; painting; sculpture; scrapbooks; albums; china; porcelain; architecture; interior design; landscape and gardening; shopping; clothing; fashion; and food. The focus might be on all or part of the life-cycle of an object, from design, to production, to circulation, to consumption, to commodification, to valuation, to collection and display.

Although scholars in anthropology, museum studies, and decorative arts have long taken material culture as their focus, in the past twenty years scholars from other disciplines that have traditionally been more text-centric have increasingly turned their attention to material
objects in what might be termed the material turn. This edited collection is designed to serve those scholars. We look forward then to proposals from a wide variety of disciplines, including, but not limited to, cultural studies, history, literature, rhetoric and composition,
art, art history and art theory, communication studies, visual design,
race studies, and women's studies. We encourage and wish to present multiple theoretical frames and methodologies that grapple with questions concerning women and material things.

Please send your 250-500-word proposal and a CV as electronic attachments in MS-word or RTF format to Beth Fowkes Tobin (beth.tobin@asu.edu ) and Maureen Daly Goggin (maureen.goggin@asu.edu ) by March 30, 2007.

America's First Doctoral Program at a Museum

The American Museum of Natural History has chosen paleontologist and lead curator John Flynn as Dean of its new comparative biology doctoral program to begin at the Richard Gilder Graduate School next year. The Museum received approval to create this country's first doctoral program at a museum last October. Click here for The New York Sun update.

CFP: Jewish Material Culture

From a call for papers posted to H-Material Culture:

Jews at Home: The Domestivation of Identity

Second volume in book series on Jewish Cultural Studies, edited by Simon J. Bronner, Distinguished University Professor, The Pennsylvania State University, USA

Publisher: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford, UK.

Format and Guidelines: 8,000-12,000 word essays in English, prepared electronically in Word (in-text citations with reference list). Photographs in TIF format (min. 300 dpi).

Deadline: March 15, 2007

Contact: Professor Simon J. Bronner, School of Humanities, The Pennsylvania State University, 777 West Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA 17057-4898, USA, sbronner@psu.edu

Papers are sought that explore how Jews conceptualize and culturally materialize spaces, and ideas of home. The editorial board is especially looking for interpretations of private selves and collectives of Jews constructing a Jewishness distinctive from that expressed in the synagogue and street. The volume addresses issues of domestication that is both imposed from the outside because of societal repression of Jewishness, and that which is displayed and invented to announce, differentiate, and renew Jewish identity. For example, contributions can open critical inquiry into display and use of Judaica in homes, secular performances of Jewishness in the home, private constructions and performances of Jewishness in repressive situations, symbolism of the Syrian Jewish housefront in mixed ethnic Jewish areas, adjustment of urban dwellings for Hasidic families, symbolism of holiday celebrations at home, emergence of the Jewish practice of kosher in the home and non-kosher outside the home, differences in ethnic home decoration, home dress, and socialization pattern in different Jewish cultures.

The purpose of the series is to present thematic volumes interpreting Jewish cultures ethnographically and historically around the globe, and exploring the idea of Jewish culture as it has been constructed, symbolized, produced, communicated, and consumed in diverse contexts. Themes of volumes will be interdisciplinary, drawing particularly on research in folklore studies, anthropology, cultural history, and sociology. Volumes typically contain ten to twelve essays of 8-12,000 words anchored by an introduction addressing the theme, and a section (usually 3 or 4 essays) called New Views of original research on Jewish cultural studies not on the theme. See http://www.littman.co.uk/jcs/index.html. Unlike most publications in Jewish studies, the Jewish cultural studies series will be exploring secular as well as religious spheres, and the intersections of the two, with attention to the diversity of traditions and customs in the Jewish world. For more information, and a list of editorial board members, see http://afsnet.org/sections/jewish/.

Great Grant News: Jacobs Fund Expands

From an e-release circulated by the Jacobs Fund (if following this link, go to the bottom of the linked page) folks at the Whatcom Museum. The Jacobs Fund has long been a valued source of support for ethnographic and linguistic projects in Native North America. It is wonderful news that Professor Kinkade's estate has allowed the program to expand so wonderfully. Note that, in the spirit of its namesake Melville Jacobs, the fund supports work on expressive culture, as well as language and social organization. This is outstanding news.

The Jacobs Research Fund of the Whatcom Museum is pleased to announce that, due to a generous bequest from the late Professor M. Dale Kinkade, the amounts and types of annual awards have been changed. There are now three categories of grants: Individual Grants ($3000 USD maximum), Group Grants ($6000 USD maximum), and Kindade Grants ($9000 USD maximum). Kinkade Grants can be used to support projects requiring an extended period of fieldwork, including dissertation research.

Since its inception, the Jacobs Fund has supported anthropological and linguistic research on the indigenous peoples of North America (Canada, Mexico, and the mainland United States, including Alaska) with a focus on the Pacific Northwest. Funds are awarded for work on problems in culture, social organization, and language. The Fund particularly encourages research on endangered languages and all aspects of expressive culture.

The deadline for application is February 15, 2007. Applications can now be submitted electronically. For more information, including application forms and guidelines, see the Whatcom Museum website: http://www.whatcommuseum.org/pages/info/info.htm, or contact Ms. Amy Geise, Jacobs Fund, Whatcom Museum, 121 Prospect St, Bellingham, WA 98225, telephone: 360-676-6981, e-mail: jgrant@cob.com.

Journal of Folklore Research Reviews

The Journal of Folklore Research (JFR) is a longstanding journal of central importance to the field of folklore studies worldwide. Since its inception, JFR (originally it was known as the Journal of the Folklore Institute) has been edited at Indiana University by faculty and students in the unit that is now known as the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. This is the program in which I teach and which is the current editorial home of Museum Anthropology. One year ago, my colleagues John McDowell and William Hansen, together with a talented team of graduate students, launched a digital companion to JFR known as JFRR, which is short for Journal of Folklore Research Reviews. JFRR is a free service in which reviews of books and other media are sent by email to a list of subscribers. One need not be a subscriber to JFR (the journal) to be a recipient of (or contributor to) JFRR emailings. All that is needed is to submit one's email address to the editors. In addition to emailing out reviews of materials of interest to folklorists, ethnomusicologists, anthropologists and others, these reviews are made available online via a searchable database. The range of materials reviewed is quite broad and the quality of the reviews is typically very good. Celebrating the project's one year anniversary, the JFRR crew is seeking to get the word out about a project that has proved very successful and of great use to a significant number of scholars. They are eager to expand their list of readers and contributors. I urge readers of this blog, and of Museum Anthropology, to check the service out. It represents another interesting experiment in reworking the work of scholarly production, circulation and conversation.

Wanted: Curator of Collections and Exhibitions

The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, a non-profit museum and exhibition space in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood, invites applications for the contracted position of Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, beginning June 1, 2007.

The Curator will be responsible for overseeing the Institute’s permanent collection, which consists of over eight hundred works of art by 20th-century Ukrainian, Ukrainian diaspora, and central and eastern European artists. The collection has particularly strong holdings in postwar art and works on paper. The position will require designing and implementing policies for the cataloging, care, and expansion of the collection; identifying works that require conservation and overseeing the hiring of outside contractors for conservation work; responding to requests for loans and documentation; and maintaining research files on past exhibitors and artists represented in the collection. The Curator will also plan and execute five to six temporary exhibitions each year on the premises of the Institute. He or she will seek out and field potential exhibitors, and will implement and install these exhibitions.

The Curator will report directly to the President, and will oversee student interns who will assist in collection care and exhibition planning. He or she will also have access to the resources and assistance of the Institute’s existing volunteer committees.

The successful candidate will have a strong knowledge of modern and contemporary visual art and culture, with a demonstrated interest in Ukrainian or central and eastern European art.

He or she will have a minimum of two years of experience working in a museum or gallery environment, and direct experience in exhibition planning and collection management. A graduate degree in a related field such as museum or curatorial studies, conservation, art history, library science, or arts administration is preferred, but applicants with equivalent professional experience will be considered. The working language of the Institute is English, but preference will be given to candidates who have knowledge of Ukrainian, or those who have an interest in learning basic Ukrainian language skills. The ideal candidate will have strong relationship building skills and will be required to report on his activities on a frequent basis to the Institute’s Executive Committee and Board of Directors. The annual salary for the position is $32,000 to $40,000, contingent on experience. The application is for a seven-month contract beginning June 1, 2007, renewable for up to two years pending budgetary approval.

Please send a detailed letter of application, curriculum vitae, documentation or samples of recent curatorial or writing projects, and the names of three professional references by March 15, 2007 to: Search Committee, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, 2320 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60622. No phone calls please.

Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa

From a Fowler Museum e-release:

'Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, Photographs by James Morris'

Opens April 22 at the Fowler Museum at UCLA

For centuries, complex adobe structures, many of them quite massive, have been built in the Sahel region of western Africa, an area encompassing parts of Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso. Made of earth mixed with water, these buildings display a remarkable diversity of form and originality. In "Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, Photographs by James Morris” — on view at the Fowler Museum at UCLA from Apr. 22 through July 15 — 50 lush, large-scale photographs offer a stunning visual survey of these structures, from monumental mosques to family homes.

In 1999 and 2000, Morris spent several months in Africa traveling to remote villages and desert communities to photograph these organically shaped, labor-intensive adobe structures. During his time in the Sahel region, Morris created a typological record of regional adobe buildings, as well as an artist's rendering of West African architecture that reflects the sensuous, surreal and sculptural quality of these distinctive buildings.

Several images of ambitious religious buildings — like the Friday Mosque in Djenne, Mali, the largest mud building in the world; the towering Friday Mosque in Agadez, Niger; and the iconic Djinguereber Mosque in Timbuktu, Mali — flaunt a grandiosity that seems to push the physical limits of mud architecture. Photographs of more humble structures, like private homes or neighborhood mosques and churches, display highly expressive and stylish buildings, often decorated with intricate painting, grillwork or relief designs.

Interestingly, these African adobe buildings share many of the qualities now much discussed in contemporary Western architectural circles: sustainability, sculptural form and the participation of the community in their conception, fabrication and preservation.

The term butabu — which describes the process of moistening earth with water in preparation for building — emphasizes the human presence as intrinsic to the creation and maintenance of these structures. The array of rich surface textures in these images are vivid markers of the earth used to make these structures and the continual communal effort required to sustain them as they are threatened by the uncertainties of weather and the encroachment of Western technology.

In Morris' sophisticated compositions, the expressive mud structures sharply lit by the African sun remind viewers of the landscape from which they have been built for centuries. The modern existence of these buildings is a reflection of their sustainability and usefulness and an affirmation of a vital, resourceful and creative culture. Morris' vivid, large-scale images (most are in the range of 32 x 45 inches) convey the dramatic nature of these buildings and reveal them as aesthetic treasures as well as architecture with contemporary relevance.

Morris is a British photographer whose work centers on the built environment and the cultural landscape. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Council and Princeton University, as well as many other private collections. The exhibition is accompanied by the book "Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, Photographs by James Morris,” published in 2003 by Princeton Architectural Press.

The "Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, Photographs by James Morris” exhibit is organized and toured by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions (CATE) of Pasadena, Calif. Support for the Los Angeles presentation was provided by the Shirley and Ralph Shapiro Director's Discretionary Fund and Manus, the support group of the Fowler Museum.

"Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, Photographs by James Morris” will be on view in the Fowler Museum's Lucas Gallery. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. and on Thursday from noon until 8 p.m. The museum is closed Monday and Tuesday. The Fowler Museum, part of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, is located in the north part of the UCLA campus. Admission is free. Parking is available for a maximum of $8 in Lot 4. For more information, the public may call (310) 825-4361 or visit http://www.fowler.ucla.edu.

In the News: Green Clothes

Students of material culture, particularly contemporary clothing and consumption patterns may find a story in today's New York Times of interest. Written by Elisabeth Rosenthal and titled "Can Polyester Save the World?" the piece explores the environmental impact of the virtually disposable, low-cost, fast fashion clothing that is central to contemporary consumption practices in Europe, North America (ex: Target, Old Navy), and significant parts of Asia. The story chronicles the differential environmental impacts of different materials and lifestyles, as well as of the rapid fashion changes characteristics of the affluent world. The story also explores the ways that some retailers in the UK are looking toward more sustainable approaches to clothing as attractive business opportunities comparable to those emergent with free trade commodities, organic foods, and green tourism.

Mediterranean Architectural Installation

Architecture of the Veil: An Installation by Samta Benyahia at the Fowler Museum at UCLA (January 28 - September 2, 2007)

Architecture of the Veil will be a site-specific installation that takes its theme from the moucharabieh, the geometric openwork screens used in Mediterranean Islamic buildings to cover windows and balconies, allowing those inside—typically women—to view the outside world without being seen. Algerian artist Samta Benyahia employs Mediterranean Islamic architectural motifs in combination with photographs and oral poetry to explore issues of gender, space, and power. It will be a dynamic exploration of gender relations as well as of the tension between interior and exterior, concealment and revelation, and private versus public space. For more information, the public may call (310) 825-4361 or visit fowler.ucla.edu.

Opening Day: Sun., Jan. 28, 2007

Artist Walkthrough: 2 pm & 4 pm [Artist Samta Benyahia discusses her installation and examines how she inverts the traditional power structure by making women, who are normally hidden from view, visible through her work. Light refreshments.]

[Image and information taken from Fowler Museum website and press release.]

Pompeii Exhibit Narrates Final Moments

Head of an Amazon, marble, mid-1st Century AD. SAP 80499. Found at the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, this is one of the best Roman copies of a type of Amazon of the Classical period, called ‘Sciarra', the original of which is attributed either to the sculptor Kresilas or to Polyclitus. [Image from Birmingham Museum of Art exhibit website.]
Pompeii: Tales of an Eruption
October 14, 2007 - January 27, 2008

"The largest collection of artifacts from the ancient Italian city of Pompeii ever to leave Italy ... nearly 500 stunning works of art and artifacts ... The stories of how they lived and died unfold in what they carried and what they left behind. Clutching precious objects including exquisitely designed jewelry, ancient coins and the tools of their trade, father, mother, children and pets are preserved for all time in casts of bodies found huddled as the volcano’s pryoclastic surges engulfed streets and buildings...'Art and architecture, archaeology and geology, city planning and history, food and medicine — it all comes together in this exhibit to tell the stories of their lives,' says Birmingham Museum of Art Director Gail Trechsel."

[Quoted from Birmingham Museum of Art e-news.]

This American Couch

In the This American Life episode (with the theme "Cat and Mouse") running on most NPR radio stations in the USA this weekend there is a compelling tale of one man's 18 year (plus or minus) quest for the perfect couch. The story makes several linkages between marital and material aspirations and, in the engaging and entertaining style characteristic of the show in general, illustrates in miniature many of the themes central to contemporary research in material culture studies, including the role of consumer objects as social agents, the social nature of consumption and desire, the materiality of real and imagined objects, and the linkage of objects and personal experience narrative.

I have, for several years, pointed students and colleagues to the show with the argument that it offers some of the best humanistic ethnography being produced today. Last year I had the opportunity to attend a staged lecture/show by This American Life's host, Ira Glass, in which he discussed and demonstrated how the weekly shows are assembled and reflected upon the kind of radio journalism he and his colleagues practice. The lecture included great tips for, and reflections on, compelling storytelling that I wished I could have shared with all of my students.

The episode will be available online next week.

SSRC Funding for Graduate Students

The following program could be of value to students preparing for work in museum/material culture studies. From a notice circulated here at Indiana University--Bloomington:

Social Science Research Council
Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF)
Awards of up to $5,000
Deadline: March 1, 2007

The Social Science Research Council is pleased to announce the Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF), a strategic fellowship program designed to help graduate students in the humanities and social sciences formulate doctoral dissertation proposals that are intellectually pointed, amenable to completion in a reasonable time frame, and competitive in fellowship competitions. Funding for the program is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Graduate students apply to one of five research fields led by two directors; each group is made up of ten to twelve graduate students. Fellows participate in two workshops, one in the late spring that helps prepare them to undertake predissertation research on their topics, and one in the early fall, designed to help them synthesize their summer research and to draft proposals for dissertation funding. For the 2007 application cycle, the eligible research fields and respective research directors are:

Black Atlantic Studies
- Andrew Apter, Professor of History, UCLA
- Percy Hintzen, Professor of African-American Studies, UC Berkeley

Rethinking Europe: Religion, Ethnicity, Nation
- John Bowen, Professor of Anthropology, Washington University
- Rogers Brubaker, Professor of Sociology, UCLA

The Political Economy of Redistribution
- Jonathan Rodden, Associate Professor of Political Science, MIT
- Erik Wibbels, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Washington

Visual Culture
- Anne Higonnet, Professor of Art History, Columbia University
- Vanessa Schwartz, Professor of History, University of Southern California

Water Sustainability: Society, Politics, Culture
- Steven Caton, Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University
- Ben Orlove, Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, UC Davis

SUPPORT PROVIDED: Sixty fellowships of approximately $5,000 will be awarded in 2007 with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Fellowships will provide support for predissertation during summer 2007.

ELIGIBILITY: The program is open to full-time graduate students in the humanities and social sciences--regardless of citizenship--enrolled in doctoral programs in the United States. Further eligibility exceptions are detailed online. Graduate students should be in the early phase of their research, generally in the 2nd or 3rd year of their doctoral program.

APPLICATION INFORMATION: To access the online application, please visit http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf/. Applications must be complete and submitted online before 9:00 pm (EST) on March 1, 2007. The reference letters must also be submitted online by the same deadline. In addition, undergraduate and graduate transcripts must be sent to the SSRC by mail and received by March 1, 2007. Applicants will be notified of the competition results in April 2007.

For further information about each of the research fields, application and eligibility requirements, please visit the DPDF Program online at http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf/ or contact dpdf@ssrc.org.

Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf

Figure (bioma)
Papuan Gulf, Purari area, Maipua Village
Wood, pigment
Overall: 25 x 7 1/4 x 1 1/2 in. (63.5 x 18.4 x 3.8 cm)
Brooklyn Museum, New York, Gift of John Vandercook
SL.10.2006.1.4

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has provided information on its current exhibition of art from the Papuan Gulf area of New Guinea, running through September 2, 2007. A release excerpt, modified for tense, offers the following:

An exhibition of some 60 powerful and graphically elaborate sculptures and 30 rare historical photographs from the Papuan Gulf area of the island of New Guinea went on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 24. Featuring sacred objects as well as photographs, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf demonstrates how deeply embedded art was in the region's social life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition is the first in-depth investigation of these art traditions in 45 years. Drawn from public and private collections, as well as the Museum's own holdings, many of the works will be exhibited for the first time.

The exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. “This is the first comprehensive study of the material since the groundbreaking 1961 exhibition Art Styles of the Papuan Gulf at the Museum of Primitive Art,” said Virginia-Lee Webb, Research Curator in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “That exhibition was organized by the late Douglas Newton, who later became a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, when the Museum of Primitive Art's collection transferred here. The current exhibition, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance, and its catalogue make important contributions to our knowledge of one of the major art traditions of the island of New Guinea, the world's second largest island.”

Representing spirits in the form of masks, figures, and ancestor or spirit boards, the sculptures were used to cajole and coax supernatural beings to attend to human needs. The juxtaposition of rare photographic images with the objects – objects often specifically identifiable in the photographs – allows for a ready presentation of culturally specific ideas. The selection of historical photographs, taken by 19th- and 20th-century travelers to the Papuan Gulf, is primarily drawn from the Museum's Photograph Study Collection in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

Among the objects on view, highlights include: a mask called hokore with a bold design depicting a gecko, a clan totem; a carved and painted spirit board called titi ebiha, with an image of a spirit in human form with asymmetrical legs animated in dance; and a masterfully carved wooden figure called agibe that celebrated Kerewa ancestors and the communal longhouse identity ensuring success in conflict. Highlights among the photographs are the Iriwake Figure in Longhouse (daima), recording the exceedingly rare sculpture called Iriwake – together for the first time in the exhibition – taken by Paul Baron de Rautenfeld (Swiss, 1865-1957) in Maiaki village on May 19, 1925; Young Men with Maiva Shields, 1881-1889, one of the earliest photographs documenting art from the Papuan Gulf, made by William Lawes (English, 1839-1907) between 1881 and 1889; and Masks, hevehe Dancing on Beach with Girls, February 1932, by Francis Edgar Williams (Australian, 1893-1943), capturing women dancing “with their arms held high like a flock of mountain birds” alongside towering hevehe masks, which represent sea spirits that have been placated and coaxed to dance.

The exhibition in New York is organized by Virginia-Lee Webb. It will be accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Robert L. Welsch, Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, Sebastian Haraha, Senior Technical Officer, Department of Anthropology, National Museum and Art Gallery, Papua New Guinea, and Virginia-Lee Webb.

A related Sunday at the Met Conference, with participation by international scholars, is planned for spring 2007, and a variety of educational programs will be offered concurrent with the exhibition, including gallery talks, family programs, and a screening of the documentary film The Mythic Camera of Frank Hurley.

Podcasts and other resources related to the exhibition are available online.

Transient Languages and Cultures

Australia is clearly a center of a great deal of interesting activity in ethnographic museums and archives. Transient Languages and Cultures is a rich blog centered at the University of Sydney that is associated with the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). The blog's most recent post offers an account by Barry Craig of recent developments in the Pacific Galleries at the South Australia Museum. PARADISEC is one more bit of evidence (following on other projects featured in Museum Anthropology and this blog), that much can be learned by tracking developments in Australia.

Pasifika Styles: An Exhibition Review Case Study

The exhibition Pasifika Styles opened at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology on May 5, 2006. From the western side of the Atlantic, the website, press materials, and informal buzz all suggested, when it was initially announced, that it was a show that really deserved to be reviewed formally and seriously in Museum Anthropology. We immediately began seeking a reviewer in the United Kingdom willing to write a review of it for the journal.

Exhibition reviews are notoriously difficult to commission. One must find someone prepared for the task who is both willing to devote time, attention, and travel to the task (for free) and in possession of enough social distance from the organizers to offer a reasonably unbiased review. This is particularly difficult when social networks of specialists are dense (as they seem to be in the UK) or when the topic falls into an area where a small number of specialists find themselves constantly reviewing each other's work.

Unfortunately, the case of Pasifika Styles illustrates the way the process sometimes ends unsuccessfully. After weeks of email exchanges (and some unreturned emails) we found a reviewer willing and well prepared to take on the review. Like most journals, Museum Anthropology regularly sends reminders to reviewers (of books, digital exhibitions, and gallery exhibitions) whose reviews are past due. These reminders are a normal part of life for scholarly journals and most scholars, at one point or another, find themselves over-committed and behind on such review obligations. Often the reminder leads to completion of the review but sometimes a reviewer must withdraw because new obligations prevent completion of the assignment. When this happens, an editor must decide whether to take up the search for a new reviewer or not. This is what has happened with the planned Pasifika Styles review. After a gap of many months, the reviewer who had planned to do it needed to withdraw. This scholar, in a much appreciated bit of assistance, recommended an alternative reviewer (who thankfully we had not yet asked). The proposed alternative reviewer, unfortunately, was unable to do it. This colleague, again generously, suggested a new candidate (another one whom we had not already asked). Checking into this possibility, we learned that this latest prospect had already reviewed the exhibition for a different journal. I relate this tale as an illustration of what sometimes happens. We have all known great projects--both books and exhibitions--that have, for what seem like inexplicable reasons, gone unreviewed in the literature. Sometimes an editor, having unsuccessfully asked everyone whom she or he can find, just has to give up. I hate to give up seeking a commissioned review of Pasifika Styles, but the quest has reached the point where it does not make sense to keep pestering colleagues about it, one at a time. It is partially a matter of how much time is available to any particular task and partially a problem of throughput. Each day the editorial office receives news of new exhibitions and copies of new books for review, including new works on the art of Oceania for which we will wind up troubling the same community of scholars in hopes of reviews. This is a discouraging reality of the work. We cannot review everything and sometimes projects that clearly deserve our collective attention go unattended to.

Perhaps web 2.0 can accomplish something of what the traditional system of reviewer recruitment, in this case, could not. If you have observations on the Pasifika Styles exhibition that you can share, please feel encouraged to leave a comment here.

Pasifika Styles runs through February 2008 and has an extensive website.

Museum Anthropology in Anthropology and Education Quarterly

The new issue of Anthropology and Education Quarterly (published by the Council on Anthropology and Education, another AAA section) has just appeared on AnthroSource and it includes a paper of likely interest to Museum Anthropology readers. The lead article is "Displayed Objects, Indigenous Identities, and Public Pedagogy" by Brenda Trofanenko. AnthroSource offers the following abstract:

In this article, I describe how one group of student examines indigenous identity formation as dynamic and open to reinterpretation. Drawing on field observations and interviews with students in a 16-month ethnographic study, I examine how one group of students worked toward understanding how indigenous identity was determined by curatorial authority and historically defined museum practices. I argue that students can question the traditional pedagogical conceptions of indigenous culture that ought to be reconsidered within the public museum, and that working to historicize such conceptions makes more explicit student knowledge production of identity.

Hawaiian Collection Gifted to Bishop Museum

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Honolulu, HI -- The Beneficiaries and the Trustees of the Estate of Samuel Mills Damon have announced the gift of a rare and valuable collection of more than 600 significant Hawaiian and Pacific artifacts to Bishop Museum, according to Tim Johns, Chief Operating Officer for the Estate of Samuel Mills Damon. The monetary value of the important collection is estimated at more than $1 million, but its historical and cultural significance is regarded as “priceless.”

The gift comes at a time when the Museum has recently undertaken a $20 million restoration and re-installation project in Hawaiian Hall where most of its Hawaiian and Polynesian cultural artifacts are displayed. The renovations, when completed, will create a state-of-the-art facility with upgraded security, conservation, and presentation methods for the Bishop Museum’s unrivaled collection. World-renowned exhibition designer Ralph Appelbaum, designer of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., is leading the team. The new Hawaiian Hall is expected to open in December 2008.

For more information about Bishop Museum or the S. M. Damon Collection and gift, call (808) 847-3511 or visit www.bishopmuseum.org.

[From the Bishop Museum online press release.]

Codex Canadiensis, Online

As some readers of this blog already know, my first big break after graduate school came when I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma for doctoral research and, at the same time, began a relationship working with, and then for, the Gilcrease Museum, a remarkable municipal museum of American anthropology, history and art. My experiences at the Gilcrease were fantastic and I learned, while working there, a tremendous amount about being a curator. Along with great people, a key aspect of this period was getting to know the museum's fantastic collections. Among the most dramatic and interesting works in the Gilcrease collections is a document known as the "Codex Canadiensis," a collection of annotated images of flora, fauna and peoples of the New World made by Louis Nicolas' around 1700.

Library and Archives Canada, in partnership with the Gilcrease Museum and the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, has built an online edition of the Codex. The site is both an online exhibition interpreting the document and a digital edition providing access to the entire work. In conversation and on this blog, I have regularly celebrated the scope and effectiveness of the Virtual Museum of Canada. This project, from a different Canadian online heritage program, again reveals how effective and advanced Canadian efforts in this sector are. For students of North American ethnohistory, having the entire Codex Canadiensis online is a wonderful resource. My late colleague, Gilcrease's curator of archival collections Sarah Erwin, was central to this project and it is a fitting tribute to her career-long efforts to make the Gilcrease Collections more useful to scholars and the general public.

Openning: Associate Curator for Textiles and Costumes

The following position at the Royal Ontario Museum is advertised on the AAM job site (AVISO) and may be of interest to Museum Anthropology readers.

Associate Curator - Textiles & Costumes in Toronto, Ontario

The ROM is pleased to invite applications for the position of Associate Curator of Textiles and Costume of the Eastern Hemisphere, excluding fashion costume and textiles. This is a tenure-track entry-level position comparable to an Assistant Professor position at a university.

A fuller description is available on the AVISO site, available here.

Blogging Digital Exhibitions

Museum Anthropology Editorial Board member Kimberly Christen, whose blog Long Road was started about a month ago and announced here, continues to offer fresh and valuable insights on our work and its larger social contexts. In her most recent post, she discusses the usefulness of the Dane-zaa Moose Hunt digital exhibition, which I mentioned to her in correspondence recently. Among the organizers of this project is Amber Ridington, a doctoral student in folklore at Memorial University, who herself reviewed a digital exhibition on a Canadian First Nations theme (Drawing on Identity: Inkameep Day School and Art Collection) in Museum Anthropology 29(1), the issue in which we inaugurated a program of such reviews. That same inaugural collection of reviews included Kim's assessment of Ara Irititja: Protecting the Past, Accessing the Future—Indigenous Memories in a Digital Age. It is exciting that Museum Anthropology and the scholarly community that brings the journal to life are extending the conversation on digital exhibitions in fruitful ways. More importantly, it is wonderful that scholars like Amber and Kim have devoted considerable energy to building, in collaboration with many others, the kinds of new media projects that do good work in the world and make such conversations so exciting.

Sapir Prize

Museum Anthropology, like all scholarly journals, relies on a great deal of support from many quarters. When I was in discussions to possibly bring the journal editorship to the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, my department chair, Richard Bauman was enthusiastic and offered to help in any ways that he could. Dick is an experienced former journal editor and a knowledgeable administrator. He worked to negotiate support from our College of Arts and Sciences and he offered departmental resources to help as well. This assistance has made our success so far possible and I am very thankful.

It does not bear directly on the field of museum anthropology (although Edward Sapir began his career as a museum anthropologist), but Dick and his longterm collaborator Charles Briggs (known among material culture scholars for his work on New Mexico woodcarvers) have recently won the Edward Sapir Book Prize, awarded by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology. Indiana University has recently issued a press release celebrating this significant achievement (available here). The award recognizes the importance of their recent book Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Congratulations to Dick and Charles on the bestowal of this important award.

Pioneer America Society: Association for the Preservation of Artifacts and Landscapes, 39th Annual Meeting

From an announcement circulated on the H-Material Culture list:

Pioneer America Society:
Association for the Preservation of Artifacts and Landscapes

39th Annual Meeting

Hagerstown, Maryland • October 10-13, 2007

The Pioneer America Society: Association for the Preservation of Artifacts & Landscapes (PAS: APAL) will hold its 39th annual conference at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel in Hagerstown, Maryland, on October 10-13, 2007.

The co-hosts for this event will be Dr. Paula S. Reed, of Paula S. Reed & Associates, Inc., of Hagerstown, MD, and Dr. Susan W. Trail, of the Monocacy National Battlefield, Frederick, MD.

“Landscapes in Stasis-Landscapes in Change: Two Views of West Central Maryland Cultural Landscapes” offers the dual conference themes of historic agricultural landscapes and their preservation, and transportation with all of the changes that evolving transportation systems have brought to the landscape. To study these themes, two day-long tours are planned for which the hosts are partnering with C&O Canal National Historical Park and Antietam National Battlefield.

The Thursday tour will examine regional transportation systems with stops at: 1) segments of the National Road and C&O Canal in Maryland, 2) the B&O Railroad Roundhouse in Martinsburg WV, and 3) Harpers Ferry, WV, where the railroad and canal meet at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. The Saturday tour will look in depth at historic cultural landscapes on Antietam National Battlefield at Sharpsburg, MD. This field trip will provide the opportunity to view several examples of 18th century through mid-19th century farmsteads that are not open to the general public. Finally, an informal caravan tour of Monocacy National Battlefield will be offered on Sunday. It will feature a visit to l’Hermitage, a French Caribbean plantation established in the 1790s by refugees of the St. Domingue slave revolt.

The conference committee is now soliciting proposals for papers, special sessions, and panel discussions on the conference themes. However, presentations on all topics related to material culture that are of interest to the Society are welcome. Presenters must be members of PAS: APAL. The abstract deadline is Monday, July 2, 2007.

For further information, please contact Dr. Paula S. Reed, Paula S. Reed & Associates, Inc., 1 West Franklin Street, Hagerstown, MD 21740; tel: 301/739-2070; email: paula@paulasreed.com; or Dr. Susan W. Trail, Superintendent, Monocacy National Battlefield, 4801 Urbana Pike, Frederick, MD 21701; tel: 301/662-3515; email: susan_trail@ nps.com.

Information on this well established material culture studies organization, which also publishes the journal Material Culture can be found here. The journal's page on the website offers a searchable database of material published in the journal's pages.

Viriginia Commonwealth University Jobs

The School of World Studies in the College of Humanities and Sciences at VCU is seeking applicants in four fields from which to fill three full-time tenure-eligible faculty positions:

China/Pacific Asia
Middle East
Transatlantic Migration and Material Culture
Europe and Film

For detailed job descriptions and application process click here:

Winterthur Quilts on Show

Quilts in a Material World

Special one-day conference at Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, March 31, 2007 [with optional pre- and post-conference workshops and tours on Friday, March 30 and Sunday, April 1].

Short lectures will explore such varied topics as 18th and 19th century women's history; historic quilts from America and France; and contemporary quilt design and collecting.

Call 800.448.3883 to register now: $225; $175 Members; Optional workshops $75 each; Optional tour $25 each.

For more information, visit the conference webpage.

Exhibit will run March 10 - September 16, 2007.

Collecting Diné Culture in the 1880s: Two Army Physicians and their Ethnographic Approaches

Readers of Museum Anthropology (MUA) 29(2) will note that, with this issue, we began publishing abstracts of articles. Not only does this bring us into line with standard practice for scholarly journals, it was a move aimed at facilitating access to MUA article content via AnthroSource. Internet visitors to AnthroSource who lack individual or library access can gain table of content information and, if they choose, pay-per-view access to individual items. Providing an abstract gives such potential customers at least some knowledge of what they might be buying into. Unfortunately, MUA could not afford the costs of a redesign of the format of the journal, although minor tweaks have been made, as with the cover and the "Notice to Authors." What this meant was that the absracts are given at the end of the article rather than at the beginning. This will continue until we are able to do a redesign. One consequence of this, to be rectified, is the absence, as of yet, of the abstract for Nancy Parezo's article (the only full article in 29(2)) in AnthroSource. A link to the paper is given [here]. Her abstract is as follows:

Collecting Diné Culture in the 1880s: Two Army Physicians and their Ethnographic Approaches

In the 1880s two army physicians, Robert W. Shufeldt and Washington Matthews, were stationed at Fort Wingate, New Mexico and studied Navajo culture. While similar in background each had a different orientation to collecting, representing two trends in 19th-century naturalist scholarship about Indians. Their approaches have influenced the development of Navajo studies in art, architecture and religious studies. While much has been written about Boasian-era collecting and ethnographic scholarship, less attention has been paid to the men and women who formed the foundation of American anthropology and whose small, individual collections are components of anthropology artifact and archival collections.

Nancy's paper is a valuable contribution to the history of museum anthropology and it is a pleasure share it with a wider audience online. To facilitate searches by those using blog search software, we will post abstracts on future articles here as well.

vachiam eecha

Readers of Museum Anthropology and this blog over the past year are aware that we have been devoting special attention to digital exhibitions and related kinds of websites originating both in and beyond museums. Over the next year we hope to begin reviewing online collections catalogs and related kinds of online resources. Fortunately and unfortunately, there are more great projects out there than we will ever be able to review either formally in the journal or less-formally on the blog. Reviewing all of the anthropologically relevant sites in the Virtual Museum of Canada alone would be a monumental and worthwhile task that we lack space and time to undertake.

The blog does allow me a chance to point out worthwhile and interesting projects that I become aware of. One site that I would urge readers to visit is by my colleague here at Indiana University, David Delgado Shorter. It is titled vachiam eecha: Planting the Seeds and it draws upon his long-term, collaborative work with the Yoeme (Yaqui) people of Northern Mexico. The site is media rich, it is trilingual (Yoeme, Spanish, and English), and it extends older ethnographic literatures, while contributing new findings and, most significantly, privileging Yoeme knowledge and theories. The site is part of the rich Web Cuadernos project of NYU's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. David's site in particular illustrates the ethnographic potential of digital media online. For an open-access essay reflecting on the project, see David's paper in the second number of the World Anthropologies Network E-journal (May 2006).

Museum Ethnographers Group, In Person

Yesterday I posted on the Museum Ethnographers Group website. Today I am sharing the recent call for papers for their upcoming annual conference, the theme of which is "Objects of Trade."

Call for papers:

Objects of trade
Museum Ethnographers’ Group Annual UK Conference 2007, Monday 21 and Tuesday 22 May
At the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

The importance of exchange in creating and sustaining relationships has long been one of the fundamental tenets of anthropology. Trade, sometimes assumed to be primarily an economic transaction, also involves the development of relationships that link groups together. Trading relationships do not just involve exchanges of goods, but rather are part of a wider system of circulating values. Such relationships may have profound effects, particularly when they involve representatives of different cultural groups, as different systems of value come into contact with each other.

Collections of ethnographic artefacts have often been acquired through trade, predominantly within the context of European expansionism and the development of empire. The movement of artefacts, people and ideas has created shared histories, albeit ones whose tangible location is now often found and interpreted in European museums.

The conference sessions will explore trading relationships and the development of museum collections, particularly when related to the maritime context of empire, and the significance of such collections to communities today.

Sessions to consider:
• The impact of trading relationships on different cultural groups
• Collecting activity and the maritime context
• The formation of museum collections through trading relationships
• The contemporary significance of historic trading relationships

Proposals for papers should be received by Claire Warrior, Curator of Exhibitions, National Maritime Museum, London, SE10 9NF; telephone 020 8312 8562; e-mail cwarrior (at) nmm.ac.uk by March, 16 2007 .

Museum Ethnographers Group, Online

The Council for Museum Anthropology (CMA) is a section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the organization that publishes Museum Anthropology, the journal for which this blog is an supplement. The CMA website, presently hosted at the Smithsonian Institution, has grown outdated and is currently being revised and prepared for the move to a new home.

In the United Kingdom there is a parallel organization to the CMA--the Museum Ethnographers Group (MEG). The MEG was founded in 1976 and also publishes a fine journal, an annual called the Journal of Museum Ethnography. The MEG has a useful website on which, in addition to news and organizational information, one can find a searchable database of journal contents spanning the Journal of Museum Ethnography's full run to date (1989-2006). Members of the organization can also download individual items.

The MEG site is a great resource for the field of museum anthropology. I also feel deep appreciation for those MEG members who are contributing to upcoming issues of Museum Anthropology. From a distance it seems clear that museum anthropology is a vibrant undertaking in the UK.

The Art of Mongolian Calligraphy

From a Mathers Museum e-release:

The beauty of written script will be explored in a new exhibit opening at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. The Art of Mongolian Calligraphy: Old Tradition Revived opens Friday, January 26, at the museum, and features works by Jalair Dovdon Batbayar, a renowned Mongolian calligraphist and artist.

The tradition of calligraphy among Mongolians dates back over 2,000 years and has been explored by Batbayar in his book The History of Mongolian Calligraphy.

The exhibit will be on display at the Mathers Museum through Sunday, May 6, 2007.

More information can be found here.

Anthropology and Material Culture Studies in Harper's Magazine

Returning recently from a funeral in Oklahoma, I purchased a copy of Harper's Magazine in an airport newsstand. I do not read it every month, but I have always enjoyed and benefited from those issues that I pick up along the way. This issue was surprising for the amount of anthropology and material culture studies found within. The cover story, "Moby-Duck Or, the Synthetic Wilderness of Childhood" is by Donovan Hohn. It tells the story of huge shipment of rubber ducks (and other animal effigy "floatees") lost at sea only to be tracked and collected by beachcombers and oceanographers as they circulate around the world. The story of the lost ducks provides him with an opportunity to reflect on a wide range of topics of current interest in material culture studies, and anthropology more broadly--the materiality of plastics, the cultural construction of animals, the passions of collectors, the nature of childhood, the archaeology of middens, etc.

The duck story is preceded by a compelling essay by anthropologist David Graeber "Army of Altruists: On the Alienated Right to Do Good." Extending his work on theories of value, he explores political life in America through the lens of class and military service. Along the way, he reflects upon the social constitution of egoism and altruism and offers up, to a general audience, a compelling account of the lessons learned through the anthropological study of gift economies. I cannot do justice to the essay, but I think that it would be a compelling starting point for a discussion with students or with colleagues in other fields. It is a fine piece of public access anthropology.

As always, the ads and photographs in Harper's are telling. There is a beautiful full-page ad, facing the "Harper's Index," promoting heritage tourism in Romania. The key line is "25 UNESCO World Heritage Sites" suggesting they ways that the paradoxical and problematic UNESCO list is being operationalized in tourism promotion aimed at educated audiences. (On UNESCO heritage policy, see MUA editorial board member Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's great essay in the new book Museum Frictions (Durham, Duke University Press, 2006). Photographs on pages 24, 27, 65, and 66 are especially evocative vis-a-vis material culture studies. There is also an beautiful essay (I cannot tell if it is ethnographic reportage or ethnographic fiction) on hopping freight trains ("Catching Out" by William T. Vollmann) that brought to mind, for me, a wonderful classic ethnography of Chicago School sociology, Nels Anderson's The Hobo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923).

Digital Exhibitions: FYI

Since Museum Anthropology (MUA) 29(1), we have been offering reviews of online exhibitions and other digital media projects. These reviews can be found in the print journal and online via AnthroSource. We previously posted a list of exhibition titles, with links, on the MUA page within the website of the IU Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. This list of links has been updated and can now be found online here.