Peter Oakley, MA student in Material Culture, UCL Stamps such as the ones illustrated are used by Navajo smiths to impress images or repeat patterns onto jewellery or silverwork. The earliest Navajo stamps from the 1880s carried similar designs which copied those found on contemporary Mexican ironwork and leather. StampedContinue Reading
Christopher Wright is a lecturer in Anthropology Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London where he teaches on the MA Visual Anthropology course. He can be contacted at – c.wright@gold.ac.uk Print made in 1999 from glass-plate negative by Lt. Henry Boyle Somerville 1893 Courtesy of the Royal Anthropological Institute ofContinue Reading
Sanderijn Hellwich, Material Culture Postgraduate Student, University College London Western art dealers and ‘connoisseurs’ are the first among others to discard tourist art as being the lowest of the lowest in the art world, that is, if they regard it as art at all. This is because it is aContinue Reading
Paul Williams, Assistant Professor, Program in Museum Studies, New York University On first reflection, we might assume that objects tied to abhorrent events deserve no place in the museum. The association of the museum with all things historically precious and valuable is an idea that remains largely stable in publicContinue Reading
Haidy Geismar, NYU Material Connexion is a “material library” based in New York, Cologne, Bangkok, and Milan. The Library houses over 3,500 new and innovative materials representing eight categories: polymers, glass, ceramics, carbon-based materials, cement-based materials, metals, natural materials and natural material derivatives. It is a resource for designers, architects,Continue Reading
Haidy Geismar, NYU Whilst of course, all art is material culture, Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist, who I saw in September at Sikkema Jenkins Gallery in Chelsea, New York is one of the few contemporary artists whose work resonates profoundly with material culture studies in its own right, without needingContinue Reading
Barbara Kirschenblatt Gimblett, NYU Mitzvah Kinder figurines, right to left: Malkeleh, Moishy, Totty (Father), Mommy, and Baby Chaim. “The ‘Mitzvah Kinder’ has been designed to represent a Yiddishe family in the world of children’s play and imagination. Our charming characters made of soft lightweight rubber, makes them safe, durable andContinue Reading
Dr Jenny Newell, Curator, Oceania (Polynesia), Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum Tonga, 1967, 39 x 29 cm. Donated by Noelle Sandwith Oc,1994,01.64 This wall hanging was made in Tonga to commemorate the royal coronation on 4 July 1967. I selected this object partly asContinue Reading
Politics of Viewing Stephen Quirke; Reader, Curator of the Petrie Museum, University College London What gives a viewer the right to look at a picture? Or an object? Or these two drinking cups, of fired Nile mud, made three and a half millennia ago in the lower Nile Valley, andContinue Reading
Mukulika Banerjee, Anthropology, UCL This week, reportage of the mid term US elections seems to devote almost equal coverage to the Democrat re-capture of the Congress and the close race to finish in the Senate as it did to malfunctioning electronic voting machines. Indiana and Ohio were singled out forContinue Reading
Aaron Glass, University of British Columbia Contemporary intercultural representation is facilitated in large part by a number of objectifying media that were relatively novel just a century ago. Barring direct social contact, we tend to experience other cultural groups via mediating technologies of representation—illustrated texts, photographs and films, museum exhibitions,Continue Reading