How Museums Can Do More Than Just Repatriate Objects
Back in 1990, when I was in my third year of graduate school, then-President H.W. Bush signed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) into law:…
Tag: art
Finding and Losing the World’s Oldest Art in Sulawesi
These handprints were made by blowing pigment around a hand placed against the wall in Sumpang Bita Cave, Sulawesi. Franco Viviani In 2019, I made a trip to…
Una vida privada privada de ser vida
La foto es de Todd Hiddo, uno de los artista de la muestra Fragmento del artículo “La intimidad en crisis”, incluido en el catálogo para la exposición Miradas…
Immerse Yourselves!
Imagine Gustav Klimt’s tender motifs, with their gleaming, golden elements, projected onto huge concrete walls. This fascinating vision has become an immersive exhibition at the new ‘Les Bassin…
Do Twins Share a Soul?
I have a clone. He’s an identical twin brother, really. But as monozygotic twins derived from one fertilized egg, we share the exact same genome. Since birth, we…
The Power of Images
[no-caption] FG Trade/Getty Images The headlines and powerful prose of the anthropologists and journalists who write for SAPIENS draw our readers in time and again. But, as the…
Archaeology Worlds, Art Worlds
Archaeologists move from avoiding talking about art to engaging in the critical practice of art. Despite the many books on the subject of archaeology and art, a reader…
How to Make a Zine
Feeling boxed in by traditional professional or academic publishing outlets? A zine—a small self-published pamphlet or booklet—can be a powerful tool for unlocking creativity and expanding the reach…
Thinking Without a Concept
How an artistic method can challenge and enrich our understandings of vision and knowledge. Imagine […] an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but…
Singing with Pippa Bacca
In noughties Italy, the Bubble Gum choir performed a liberatory counterimage of the feminine. Today, Bacca’s chorus breathes new life into the ensemble of characters and an impermanent…
All Things Ape
One illustrator’s approach to conveying the multidimensional lives of apes with particular focus on their anatomy. *This essay includes scientific illustrations as well as descriptions of the observin…
The Human Cost of Border Enforcement Policies
A participatory pop-up exhibition breaks down traditional disciplinary boundaries between art and anthropology to inform wider audiences about the humanitarian crisis occurring at the United States–Me…
The Anthropologist as Artist
A deeply interdisciplinary visual artist creates objects that are both art and ethnography. Her installations produce space for immersive, social forms of understanding. As a visual artist and…
Beer Can Photography
In an age of digital technology, an experiment with pinhole cameras reveals a striking record of the sun’s daily path and a changing landscape in northern Sweden. Uffe…
Contested Memory. The ‘Comfort Women’ Statue in Berlin and Dealing with Sexual Violence in War
The unveiling of a statue in memory of the victims of sexual violence committed by the Japanese Army in World War II has led to diplomatic tension between…
Atmospheric Failure
Fog catchers (atrapanieblas) are fairly simple constructions. They consist of large plastic or nylon nets stretched between two vertically positioned poles, perpendicular to the direction of the incom…
Vita Peacock: The slave trader, the artist, and an empty plinth
On 7th June 2020, the bronze statue of Edward Colston in the English city of Bristol was pulled down by Black Lives Matter protesters with a rope, rolled…
REDUX: Boredom at #EASA2014
Originally published on February 6, 2015. On August 2nd, 2014, Allegra ran a panel titled ‘Boredom, Intimacy and Governance in ‘Normalized’ Times of Crisis’ at the EASA 2014…
Sobre la representació de la catàbasi de Crist
SOBRE LA REPRESENTACIÓ DE LA CATÀBASI DE CRIST Homenatge de Joaquín Yarza Manuel Delgafo M’he estat mirant el Descensus ad inferos del beat de Girona (970). Ha estat…
Were Women the True Artisans Behind Ancient Greek Ceramics?
This amphora comes from a period in ancient Greek history called the Early Iron Age. Zde/Wikimedia Commons Painted over the enormous midsection of the Dipylon amphora—a nearly 2,800-year-…
What Ancient Gender Fluidity Taught Me About Modern Patriarchy
Some figurines, like this one from the La Tolita-Tumaco culture, seem to blend gender characteristics from breasts to loincloths into a possible transgender or nonbinary figure. Museo Naciona…
How to teach anthropology in a pandemic? by João Biehl
“… a deadly pestilence is in our town, strikes us and spares not, and the house of Cadmus is emptied of its people while Black Death grows rich…
Confronting the Colonial Legacies of Museum Collections
Berlin’s Humboldt Forum opened its doors to the public for a special event in 2019, even as construction on the building continued. David von Becker/SHF Art historian Bénédicte…
