Category Archives: Anthropology

Lives of the Artist: Patrick Tjungurrayi by John Carty

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Will

Readers who followed this blog for a long time know already of my admiration for John Carty’s work.  John is an anthropologist trained at the Australian National University under Howard Morphy.  He has long had an interest in art history, … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Art | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Video Culture / Museum Culture

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Will

A pair of new exhibitions opened this past week at the University of Queensland Anthropology Museum.  One extends established queries about the nature of objects stored in museums and their relationships to the people they purport to represent.  The other makes … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Art, Communities, Culture, Film | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Explicating Bark Painting

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Will

Two years ago, during the turning of 2011 into 2012, I took my customary holiday break from serious thinking and produced a pair of posts in which I looked back at what I thought to be some of the core … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Art, Books | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Inside and Outside: an essay

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Will

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 →

Posted in Anthropology, Culture | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The Lake Where Cultures Meet

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Will

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 , , , | 2 Comments

The Poetry of Geography

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Will

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 →

Posted in Anthropology, Culture, Film | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Larrakirtj: Encyclopedia of the Yolngu

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Will

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 →

Posted in Anthropology, Art, Books | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Riches of the Canning Stock Route

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Will

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 →

Posted in Anthropology, Art, Books, Culture | Tagged , | 3 Comments

“Manapanmirr” at The Margaret Mead Film Festival

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Will

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 →

Posted in Anthropology, Film | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Djang’kawu Come to America

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Will

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 , , , , , , | 1 Comment