Brown University, Salomon Center, Room 001

Talking about the tyranny of language, Walter Benjamin argued that if things could speak they would complain of our ignorance of the sensuous ways that things “speak” through their material properties. Drawing on 16 years of engagement with collections from the Papuan Gulf, Joshua A. Bell (Smithsonian Institute) explores what cross-cultural histories can be told […]

Presented by Gloria O'Neill, President and CEO, Cook Inlet Tribal Council Learn how a tribal nonprofit organization in Anchorage Alaska and its partners created a new precedent for sustainability and self-determination. As told through the lens of the Inupiat people of Arctic Alaska, the global launch of the puzzle-platformer “Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa)” established a […]

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 […]

Preston Singletary's work with glass challenges the notion that indigenous artists are only best when traditional materials are used. He has helped advocate on the behalf of all indigenous peoples through his art, connecting ancient Native styles to current modern art movements.  His artistic style continues to evolve and develop, keeping the work fresh and relevant while […]

This talk, given by Ruth Phillips, Carleton University, re-examines the critical role played by the taste for primitive art in the emergence of contemporary Indigenous artistic modernisms in Australia and Canada. Using the examples of expatriate German anthropologist Leonhard Adam-- author of the widely read 1940 Penguin Primitive Art-- and the Austrian-born artist George Swinton-- […]