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Category Archives: Anthropology
Inside and Outside: an essay
Several weeks ago I wrote about a panel discussion at the Toledo Museum of Art in which the topic of restricted knowledge in Aboriginal painting—what Stephen Gilchrist referred to as “registers of knowledge”—created a degree of consternation among some members … Continue reading
The Lake Where Cultures Meet
A desert lake. Paruku. Lake Gregory. This is the place where the ancestral hero, Kiki, came down from the east, a falling star. Landed in the water and created seeds, grapes, bandicoot, and blue-tongued lizard. This is the place where … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropology, Art, Books, Culture
Tagged Ecology, John Carty, Lake Gregory, Paruku
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The Poetry of Geography
I grew up near the ocean. For the first eighteen years of my life a twenty-minute walk would bring me to docks and lapping waves, sand and seaweed and salt air. I didn’t know how much a part of me … Continue reading
Larrakirtj: Encyclopedia of the Yolngu
On our first trip to Australia in 1990, still largely ignorant of Aboriginal art (despite the trip being inspired in large part by the Dreamings exhibition seen at the Asia Society in New York CIty two years earlier), we hit … Continue reading
Riches of the Canning Stock Route
The depth, the wealth, the variety of the material contained in Ngurra Kuju Walyja / One Country One People: stories from the Canning Stock Route (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) are such that I’m almost at a loss to begin describing it all. A … Continue reading
“Manapanmirr” at The Margaret Mead Film Festival
The 36th Annual Margaret Mead Film Festival was held in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History this year from November 29 through December 2. The longest-running showcase for international documentaries in the United States, the … Continue reading
The Djang’kawu Come to America
Last weekend we were back at Dartmouth College to hear Howard Morphy deliver the Montgomery Endowment Lecture as part of the fellowship that has him and his wife, Frances, in residence at the College this semester. He chose as his … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropology, Art, Culture
Tagged Crossing Cultures, Djang'kawu, Exhibitions, Hood Museum of Art, Howard Morphy, Yirrkala, Yolngu
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Huxley Medal Awarded to Howard Morphy
I heard some fantastic news this week. Professor Howard Morphy of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences has been named as the 2013 Huxley Memorial Medallist by the Royal Anthropological Institute. The international award is the highest honour … Continue reading
The Centre in the Camera
A new book by Philip Jones always promises to be a treat, and although Images of the Interior: seven Central Australian photographers (Wakefield Press, 2011) was published a year ago, I’ve just recently had the pleasure of its acquaintance. Jones … Continue reading
Posted in Anthropology, Books, Culture
Tagged Frank Gillen, Philip Jones, Photography, Rex Battarbee
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Gurindji History, Japanese Historian
Sometimes the blurb on the back of the book gets it exactly right. ”A playful, whimsical opus of integrity, imagination and breathtaking audacity,” says ANU’s Ann McGrath of Gurindji Journey: a Japanese historian in the Outback (University of Hawai’i Press, … Continue reading
