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Posts from the ‘Exhibitions’ Category

Oct 11

Folklore Collection Special Exhibition at Wells Library for #AFS11

Today I got to see the exhibition at the Wells Library focusing on Indiana University’s unbelievable folklore studies collection. The exhibition, in the library lobby, was put together by a team led by IU folklore librarian Moria Marsh and has been installed as part of the programming for #AFS11. I got to see the exhibition today and it is great.

Among the cool items on exhibition at the Library is the award recently won by the Open Folklore project, a joint effort of the AFS and the IU Bloomington Libraries.

There are tons of AFS-related exhibitions around campus and town. Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to get them ready.

Oct 11

A Day of Pre- Pre-conference Activities at #AFS11

Today, out of town folklorists started appearing around Bloomington for a series of events designed to rally the local troops and welcome the earliest of the visitors coming to Bloomington for the American Folklore Society meetings. I spent the early afternoon in a fruitful Open Folklore planning meeting, but my colleagues welcomed Dr. Fekade Azeze, Associate Associate Professor of Ethiopian Literature and Folklore, and Coordinator of the Folklore Graduate Programme, at Addis Adeba University in Ethiopia. USC Folklorist Tok Thompson moderated a discussion with Dr. Azeze at midday and then he delivered a lecture on customary dispute resolution in the afternoon. I made it to the talk and it was very stimulating material. Dr. Azeze described the customary legal system of two of the largest Ethiopian peoples and situated these practices in the contemporary context, describing efforts to study such systems as a means of indigenizing the national legal system, which is largely founded on non-Eithiopian principles and practices.

Immediately after the lecture, there was an opening reception for the Faces of Fieldwork exhibition curated by Pravina Shukla, Michael Lee, and Carrie Hertz and on exhibition at the Mathers Museum. The portrait photographs submitted by the contributing ethnographers were stunning, the exhibition was well mounted by the Mathers staff, and the reception was a nice opportunity to experience the exhibition and welcome guests to town for the meetings.

I had to get home for family responsibilities, by a departmental reception for early-arriving alumni (Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology) was held. I am sure that a good time was had by all.

Tomorrow things begin in earnest, with pre-conference tours both on-campus (IU research collections and archives) and off (Southern Indiana regional sights focusing on the limestone industry). The meeting will open formally tomorrow night, with the highlight being Henry Glassie’s plenary lecture and a big welcoming reception. I will spend the day in an AFS board meeting.

Safe travels and welcome!

Oct 8

Peace, War, Folklore: Themester + #AFS11

Soon a large group of folklorists, from the U.S. and from many countries, will be visiting my adopted home town of Bloomington, Indiana. The 2011 American Folklore Society meetings are returning to Indiana University for the first time since 1968. There is much history that could be recounted, but it seems very salient that 1968 is a year famous for its protests and revolutions. 2011 is shaping up as a revolutionary year as well. This convergence relates to the conference theme (which was chosen well over a year ago)–Peace, War, Folklore.

How did the conference planners come to select this theme? Its a timely one and, as the program it prompted shows, a fruitful one. The immediate inspiration came from a desire to tie in to a semester-long program at Indiana University (organized by the College of Arts and Sciences) called Themester. As the name suggests, a themester is a semester theme that provides a basis for campus-wide activities, courses, and programs. At IU the Themesters happen during fall semesters. The theme for 2011 is Making War, Making Peace.

It is exciting that the AFS meetings can stand out as one of the big Themester events for 2011. The Themester program maintains a blog and the two most recent posts are by members of the AFS planning committee. In his post, conference chair Michael Dylan Foster explains the conference theme in light of folkloristics on the one hand and Themester on the other. In a second post, Jon Kay, Director of Traditional Arts Indiana and a member of the conference committee describes a TAI-organized, Themester-supported exhibition on the art of Gustav Potthoff, a man who paints to preserve and convey personal memories of the horrors of war and the prisoner-of-war experience based on his internment during World War II, during which he was among those forced to build the notorious “bridge over the River Kwai.”

To learn more about Themester at IU, see the program website. Thanks go to the Themester leadership for its engagement with the 2011 AFS meetings. (Public conference events relating to the Themester are listed here.)

Sep 12

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews [A discussion of her current museum project in the online journal Habitus.]

Aug 4

Wars and Rumors of Wars @Philbrook Museum of Art

Excited to see this promotional video with my friend Christina Burke, Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art at Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa. Christina is a great curator stewarding a great collection in a great museum. This video introduces the new exhibition Wars and Rumors of War. The exhibition is built out of the museum’s fine collection of Native American works on paper. Congratulations Christina, congratulations Philbrook. I hope I make it back to Tulsa in time to see the show.

Jul 23

Colorado College Road Trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Denver Art Museum

I have always wanted to visit the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Today I had my chance and it was great. As part of my “Introduction to Folklife” course at Colorado College, my class and I had the chance to go north to Denver for the day and to visit both museums. Both are impressive. Both have great collections and deep traditions of excellent work in those areas that matter most to me—world ethnography and Native American studies/Native American art. There was no way we could see more than a small portion of both museums, but what we saw in both institutions was great. Colorado is very lucky.

At DMNH we were generously hosted by Steve Nash, who showed us around behind the scenes in the Department of Anthropology (which he chairs). We also got to see Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, who was busy working on the next issue of Museum Anthropology (Steve and Chip took over editing the journal from me in 2009 and are doing great work with it.)

Our focus at DMNS was the Native North American culture halls, where we saw objects relating to our current reading and research project (centered on Daniel C. Swan’s book Peyote Religious Art: Symbols of Faith and Belief) and our next one (focused on Claire Farrer’s Thunder Rides a Black Horse: Mescalero Apaches and the Mythic Present). Organized on the basis of cultural areas, the DMNS exhibitions (which are steadily being updated and improved by Chip and Steve) do a great job of providing an basic orientation to the diversity of Native North America. This was evident when we got to the Denver Art Museum and the students had a better ability to appreciate the contexts for the work that is presented in a art museum mode there.

At DMNH we also had a chance to see the strange and remarkable carved gemstone sculptures made by Vasily Konovalenko to portray aspects of Russian peasant folklife. One could talk and think about them for hours and they were a great conversation point for our class and a great reminder of how complex not only art and material culture are, but how complex issues of cultural representation are, in general and under the banner of folklife in particular.

After short drive downtown and a quick street-side gyro, we hit the art museum. Like DMNS it is huge and impressive and impossible to see properly on a single day trip. Here our foci were the Native American and non-western art halls, as well as the galleries devoted to the art of the Western United States. We saw the galleries for the arts of Oceania, Africa, Asia, and Native North America. DAM was among the first U.S. art museums to get serious about Native American art and their collections are stunning.  In my own area of special interest, the DAM is currently exhibiting 5 (!) beaded bandolier bags from the Southeast. This is simply dumbfounding and a reminder of how deep the collection is.  All the galleries provided rich learning opportunities for me and for the students. I was reminded of how fun it is to teach in the presence of rich collections well-displayed. (I really missed being a curator today.)

The students seemed to have good time. They were easy, engaged, and wonderful travel companions and all the logistics went off without a hitch.

Colorado College and its amazing block plan (which makes such trips possible through its one class at a time format) are at the root of the day’s success. Many people did great behind-the-scenes administrative work to enable me (as a new to CC  visitor) to take this trip with the students. Thanks to everyone who heaped to make it happen.

Jan 26

Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains

I am very pleased to note the publication of the exhibition catalog Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains. This book has been published by the Brooklyn Museum in cooperation with the University of Washington Press on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name that has been organized by the Brooklyn Museum and that will travel to the Autry National Center for the American West in LA and the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. It is a beautiful book on a topic that long been of scholarly and general interest. The project has been organized by and the catalog edited by Nancy B. Rosoff and Suzan Zeller of the Brooklyn Museum. I am taking special notice of the book here because it includes contributions from three of my close friends and collaborators.  Daniel C. Swan and Michael P. Jordan (Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History) have published a chapter titled “Tipis and the Warrior Tradition,” which focused on their collaborative work with Kiowa people and organizations and Christina E. Burke (Philbrook Museum) has published a chapter on “Growing Up on the Plains,” which explores child raising and associated material culture among the Native peoples of the Plains in the context of the tipi as vernacular architecture.

Jan 15

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Exciting New Presentation Formats for #AFS2011

Work on the 2011 American Folklore Society Meetings is now in high gear. The AFS meetings next fall will be held on my home campus at Indiana University Bloomington. As we get ready to host the meetings, I have been particularly involved in getting ready to introduce a new quick format presentation format and to re-boot the poster format along museum exhibition lines.  These new possibilities are described in the document circulated today by the Society. I hope that a large and diverse group of scholars takes an interest in attending the meetings and that these two new presentation formats appeal to scholars of all levels of seniority and to those working across the full breadth of folklore studies and its congeners. I want to personally express thanks to those senior scholars who have agreed to attend and host the poster exhibitions opening event and to my colleagues participating in the trial run for what are now (in AFS-speak) being called “Diamond” presentations at the 2010 meetings in Nashville. Here are the details from the home office:

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Dear Colleagues,

In the next few weeks we will post online the Invitation for Participation for the American Folklore Society’s 2011 annual meeting, set for October 12-15 at the Biddle Hotel and Conference Center in the Indiana Memorial Union complex on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington. We encourage participation by folklorists throughout the world in our gathering.

This will be AFS’s first meeting on a university campus since our last meeting in Bloomington in 1968. Our hosts will be the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, and the theme of the meeting, on which presentations are encouraged but not required, is “Peace, War, Folklore.”

All proposals for the annual meeting program will be due by March 31. The entire process includes registration for the meeting, payment of the registration fee, and submission of your proposal.

We’re sending you this message to bring you up to date on two new developments within our annual meeting. The first has to do with an improvement in the proposal submission process, and the second involves the introduction of two new presentation formats.

But first, here is a link to a video documenting the Bloomington annual meeting committee’s musical “Invitation to Bloomington 2011” performed at our annual business meeting in Nashville last October.

Now to the news:

1. No More Long Abstracts Required from Individual Presenters in Pre-Organized Sessions

Beginning with the 2011 annual meeting, people who will be making presentations in pre-organized paper and Diamond sessions (for more information on Diamond sessions, see below) no longer have to submit long (500-word abstracts) for their presentation, just short (100-word) ones.

As in the past, individuals participating in organized paper and Diamond sessions will provide their short abstracts to their session chair in advance of the March 31 deadline. Session chairs will submit long and short abstracts for the session as a whole, and short abstracts for all presentations, as part of the session proposal.

2. Two New Presentation Formats at AFS 2011

While our meeting will feature the presentation of papers, discussion forums, media works, and professional development workshops as it has done for many years, in 2011 we are giving special emphasis to two new forms of presentation.

Re-Imagining the Research Poster in Folklore Studies: AFS Research Poster Exhibitions

The 2011 Annual Meeting Program Committee and the Society are making a special effort to capitalize on the research poster’s special virtues for folklorists. AFS Executive Board member and Indiana University Associate Professor of Folklore Jason Jackson will curate the 2011 Research Poster Exhibitions.

Posters, a vital means of scholarly communication in many fields, allow for the integration of graphic and textual information. They share the strengths characteristic of the informal settings in which folklorists often learn, teach, and study. Many folklorists are deeply involved in studying topics that lend themselves to the poster exhibition framework.

The current digital moment has created new opportunities to extend the power of this genre. Posters can stand alone as documents of scholarly research in folklore studies, and can also be augmented through informal oral presentation or the use of multimedia enhancements. They can also be repurposed after a conference into gallery and web-based exhibitions. Like conference papers, posters can also serve as a foundation for other genres of scholarly communication, including articles and book chapters. Posters themselves have begun to be peer-reviewed, revised, and published in scholarly journals.

This year, in lieu of poster panels organized by the membership, we are soliciting individual proposals for poster presentations on one of four broad topics: Peace, War, Folklore (the 2011 annual meeting theme), Folklore and Folklorists Making a Difference, Folklore Studies and the Digital Humanities, and Musical Cultures.

Poster presentations selected for each grouping will be brought together to comprise one of four formal exhibitions, which will be initially presented at an opening reception on Thursday morning. At that time, a distinguished scholar with special knowledge of the exhibition theme will host each exhibition, and will make public remarks about the exhibition’s posters.

Steve Zeitlin from City Lore will host Peace, War, Folklore

Marsha MacDowell from the Michigan State University Museum will host Folklore and Folklorists Making a Difference

Kimberly Christen from Washington State University will host Folklore Studies and the Digital Humanities

Jeff Todd Titon of Brown University will host Musical Cultures

The reception will also provide time for presenters to dialogue informally with each other, with interested conference attendees, with the hosts, and with other special guests. The posters will remain on exhibition throughout the conference.

Post-conference publication of selected posters is a possibility. We have invited a number of journal editors to attend the poster exhibition opening as special guests. Editors so far agreeing to attend include Regina Bendix (co-editor of Ethnologia Europaea), Kristina Downs (co-editor of Folklore Forum, which is interested in receiving submissions from participating poster exhibitors), Rob Howard (editor of Western Folklore), Jason Baird Jackson (editor of Museum Anthropology Review), and Tok Thompson (co-editor of Cultural Analysis).

AFS Diamond Presentations: An Invitation

On the basis of their increasing popularity among scholars and with the inspiration of a successful experiment undertaken at the 2010 Annual Meeting in Nashville, the American Folklore Society invites individual and organized session proposals in what we are calling the Diamond format, a formalized presentation genre structured by time and images:

Individual Diamond presentations are seven minutes long and are organized around 21 slides that are set to advance automatically every 20 seconds.

Audience response to such presentations have been very enthusiastic, and the format offers a number of specific advantages:

· As with the highly structured expressive genres that folklorists have often studied, this format calls upon presenters to be creative and selective in organizing their presentations.

· Focused presentations and images aid and engage audiences, even those unfamiliar with the topic or those whose first language differs from that of the presenter.

· This format is valuable not only for presenting image-based topics (such as studies of material culture or cultural performance), but also for all presenters concerned with visual communication and those who wish to experiment with visual techniques to enhance communication.

· This format is an easy starting point for the creation of audio slidecasts and small digital exhibitions—more durable modes of scholarly communication valuable to diverse online audiences—as well as in such settings as media kiosks in gallery exhibitions.

· The brevity of the format allows extra time for discussion.

· Brief but structured, the format supports multidimensional, open-ended presentations, making it very appropriate for the presentation of new projects or works-in-progress.

You may submit proposals for individual Diamond presentations, which the Program Committee will group into sessions, or organized Diamond sessions of six to ten presentations. All Diamond sessions will be constructed with an initial seven minutes allotted for preparation and introduction of the session as a whole, seven minutes for each Diamond presentation, and the balance of the available time dedicated to discussion of the full set of presentations. At the discretion of the session chair, the discussion time may be used for response by a formal discussant, open “full room” questions and answers, break-out time in which presenters can confer with interested audience members, or a combination of these discussion formats.

For those who would like to know more about the sources of inspiration for this format, there is much discussion around the web of a variety of similar (but not identical) formats, including the format known as Pecha-Kucha, developed in the design fields in Japan. Some of these are associated with formally trademarked brands of presentation events. Also available online are videos and slidecasts of presentations made in these related formats:

A YouTube version of Jason Jackson’s AFS 2010 Diamond presentation on the Open Folklore project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBUfYuVlBZE

A Pecha-Kucha presentation on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NZOt6BkhUg

“Hate Long, Rambling Speeches? Try Pecha-Kucha” by Lucy Craft [NPR on Pecha-Kucha]: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130698873

A discussion of Pecha-Kucha in anthropology with links to examples and information: http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/2010/pecha-kucha

The Pecha-Kucha Organization: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

On Lightning Talks: http://perl.plover.com/lightning-talks.html

On the Ignite Format and Events: http://ignite.oreilly.com/

Search also “Pecha Kucha” in YouTube, “Death by PowerPoint,” “Ignite,” “Lightning Talks,” and Wikipedia.

——

Please feel free to circulate this email to your non-AFS-member colleagues who may not have received it directly. We look forward to seeing you in Bloomington this October. Thank you for your support of our field and Society.

Sep 21

Mediterranean Treasures: Selections from the Classics Collection [at SNOMNH]

I am excited to share news of an upcoming exhibition at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Opening October 2 and continuing through January 2, 2011 is Mediterranean Treasures: Selections from the Classics Collection.  At SNOMNH, the museum’s significant Classical Archaeology collections are steward by the Division of Ethnology (led by my friend and collaborator Daniel C. Swan). This new show has been curated by the division’s talented collections manager (and old world archaeology specialist) Kathryn Barr. Describing the exhibition’s orienting framework, the exhibition release quotes her noting:

“In developing this exhibit we faced a challenge on how to incorporate a number of different cultures and time periods,” explained Kathryn Barr, exhibit curator and manager of the ethnology collection at the museum. “Ultimately we decided that rather than focusing on the differences between these groups we would highlight their shared technologies. The Mediterranean Sea provided the perfect stage for this exhibit, as it was truly a focal point for the cultures we wanted to highlight. For centuries the region surrounding this body of water has been an area of great diversity, but it has also been an important melting pot as well. Many of the great civilizations of Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East developed along its shores and each one influenced the others.”

As discussed in the full release (available here), this will be the museum’s most ambitious exhibition from the Classics Collection and the first major exhibition of the collection staged in the museum’s impressive new facility.

While we are thinking about the SNOMNH Classics collections, I can also note the small digital exhibition that then-graduate assistant Rhonda S. Fair built during my time as SNOMNH Assistant Curator of Ethnology. Found here, it presents the museum’s Mark Allen Everett Collection of Ancient Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Pottery.

SNOMNH C-2001-1-7

May 4

100 Summers Exhibition Opens at SNOMNH

I am pleased to note the openning of the “One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record” exhibition at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman. I have not yet heard how the openning events have gone, but I look forward to seeing the exhibition myself this summer.  Learn more about the show here.  Find the associated book, authored by Candace Greene and published by Nebraska, here.

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