Robert Goldwater Library blog

You've read the article, now see the pictures

In a nice display of publishing synergy,  Museum Anthropology (the blog) has just reproduced color images to accompany an article recently published in Museum Anthropology (the journal), Crests on Cotton: “Souvenir” T-shirts and the Materiality of Remembrance among the Kwakwaka’wakw of British Columbia by Aaron Glass (vol. 31, no. 1 (spring 2008), p. 1-16).

Note to our readers: You can access the article online (via Anthrosource) or consult our print copy (A C854).

While in this instance the blog is meant to supplement the print and online journal, the journal will no doubt benefit from visits by blog readers wanting to know more behind the images appearing in the blog post.

Malian manuscripts digitized

Excerpted and reblogged from the New York Times, published May 20, 2008:

Project Digitizes Works from the Golden Age of Timbuktu
by John Noble Wilford

< A legal opinion on the rules for buying and selling goods. (Credit: Savama-DCI)

From Timbuktu to here, to reverse the expression, the written words of the legendary African oasis are being delivered by electronic caravan. A lode of books and manuscripts, some only recently rescued from decay, is being digitized for the Internet and distributed to scholars worldwide ...

Now, the first five of the rare manuscripts from private libraries have been digitized and made available online (www.aluka.org) to scholars and students. At least 300 are expected to be available online by the end of the year.

Read full article

Tips on web tools for anthropology

Rex at Savage Minds has re-posted a very helpful (if unattributed) blog post with suggestions on "how to use commonly available and completely free tools on the Internet in order to keep up to date with the latest literature in anthropology." He offers to updated it regularly if there is sufficient interest from the readership.

The focus of the original post is Pacific Islands research, and the choices may reflect that. Here's what's covered:

• Table of Contents Alerting
• Get an email account
• Subscribe to American Anthropologist and other American Anthropological Society journals
• Subscribe to the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
• Subscribe to new book alerts at University of California Press
• Sign up to your other favorite publishers

Even if you already do all this, you might want to skip down to the "Final Thoughts" entry, where the unintended consequences of Total Information Awareness are addressed.

Four Maya sites featured on new web site

Originally spotted on ARLiSNAP:

An visually exciting and comprehensive web site on four Maya archaeological sites has just been posted by Charles Rhyne, professor emeritus of art history, and his colleagues at Reed College. [Kudos to Prof. Rhyne, who was my academic advisor at Reed.]

Architecture, Restoration and Imaging of the Maya Cities of Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil and Labná "includes over 1000 photographs ... taken on site, with descriptive captions, including architectural and sculptural details, paint remains, and interior spaces, not previously published. In addition, there are over 250 19th century drawings, prints and photographs and another 300 by early 20th century scholars, many previously unpublished, showing the appearance of these four cities before the extensive restoration campaigns of the twentieth century." While the site was produced by Reed College primarily for the use of its faculty and students, the site will certainly be of interest to a wider audience of specialists and non-specialists alike.

Of particular note to the library research-minded are the extensive scans culled from published works including Waldeck's Voyage pittoresque et archéologique dan la province d'Yucatan (1838), the several works by Stephens and Catherwood from the 1840s, as well as Charnay's Cités et Ruines Américaines (1862-63) and Anciennes  Villes du Nouveau Monde (1885), photographs by Le Plongeon, and Seler's monograph on the ruins at Uxmal.

An extensive bibliography is included, sorted into four separate pdf files by subject, author, title and date.

African art programs @ Clark Art

From The Clark Art Institute web site:

This spring The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and the Williams College Museum of Art have organized a series of programs and exhibitions focusing on contemporary African art, diasporic art, and art history, designed to catalyze dialogue across academic disciplines for artists, scholars, students, and the general public.

Artistic Crossings of the Black Atlantic: The Migratory Aesthetic in Contemporary Art (Symposium)
Saturday, March 1, 2008

This symposium invites five acclaimed artists—multi-media artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, sculptor Willie Cole, British filmmaker Isaac Julien, photographer Hank Willis Thomas, and installation artist and MacArthur Fellow Fred Wilson—to discuss the Black Atlantic aesthetic. Through transatlantic connections among Africa, Britain, the Caribbean, and the United States, black intellectuals and literary figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Richard Wright fashioned a Black Atlantic culture that made a central contribution to the modernist aesthetic. Today this Black Atlantic aesthetic extends into the realm of the visual as international artists critically engage cross-Atlantic migration as a principal focus of their work. (Ticketed event: $20, $10 for members; students free)

Art History and Diaspora: Genealogies, Theories, Practices (Conference)
Friday, April 25-Saturday, April 26, 2008

This year's Clark Conference will bring together artists, curators, and art historians to investigate the impact of the field of diaspora studies on art historical scholarship. A primary focus will be on defining how diaspora—with its connotations of forced migration because of political expulsion, enslavement, shifting belief systems, war, and other forms of nationalist conflict—has shaped both art-making and art historical scholarship in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Speakers will include John P. Bowles, Hamid Naficy, Richard J. Powell, Nikos Papastergiadis, Kobena Mercer, Simon Njami, Pamela R. Franco, and Lubaina Himid. Co-convened by Mora Beauchamp-Byrd, Natasha Becker, and Ondine Chavoya.

Contemporary African Art: History, Theory and Practice: A Workshop
May 24, 2008

"Contemporary African Art: History, Theory, and Practice" is a workshop organized by the Research and Academic Program of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and the Wits School of the Arts at the University of Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg, South Africa. This project, undertaken with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will examine more than forty years of art historical scholarship about modern and contemporary African art. The two components of the workshop, international gatherings of distinguished scholars and artists, will take place in 2007 and 2008. The initial phase of the Workshop [was] held at WITS (October 25–28, 2007), and the second phase will be held at the Clark in Williamstown, Massachusetts (May 22–25, 2008). This will be followed by a Getty-funded residency for African participants in Williamstown and New York City from May 25–30.