Exploring the Collections

Anthropologist are explorers. We travel to exotic locales to excavate ancient ruins or learn from indigenous communities. Many of the materials gathered in our research are now in the storerooms and laboratories of University museums. In this talk, Carla Sinopoli (University of Michigan), opens the storerooms of the remarkable Asian collections of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology to discuss how archaeological and ethnographic collections made at the start of the last century continue to be of value today. Dr. Sinopoli focuses on three collections, each with complex (and disturbing) histories: the Worcester collection of photographs from the colonial Philippines; ceramics and other artifacts from the U-M Philippine Archaeological Expedition (1922-1925); and sacred paintings and religious objects from the Himalayan Expedition of 1932-34. Sponsored by donors to the Jane Powell Dwyer Lecture Fund and the Friends of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology