Looking Ahead: University Anthropology Museums Matter

With notices going out from the Program Committee this week, the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting (November 29-December 3, 2017) is coming into focus. Notes that I am seeing on Facebook and Twitter suggest that the program will feature a lot to like. I am pleased to note that a Executive Session that colleagues and I have organized has been accepted and scheduled. If you are interested in museum anthropology or the future of university museums, I invite you to hold the day and time. We would love to see you there. Here are the details.

Looking Ahead: University Anthropology Museums Matter
Friday, December 1, 2017
8:00 AM – 9:45 AM

Session Abstract: University-based museums of anthropology, including campus museums of natural history, history, and art with anthropological programs, play a vital role not just as hubs for the work of museum anthropology but for the research, teaching, professional training, and public outreach agendas of the field as a whole. While the historical contributions of university-based museum anthropology are decisive and worthy of continued investigation, this panel aims to characterize present work viewed in institutional terms and to anticipate new developments and emerging needs in the field more broadly. Numerous campus anthropology museums have experienced leadership changes in recent years. This collective shift, as well as dramatic changes happening in the publics with which campus museums engage, suggests that now is a particularly good moment to undertake an environmental scan and in which to consider a collective agenda that is cognizant of the vexing challenges—from anthropogenic climate change to rising inequality; from resurgent xenophobia to the transformation of higher education—that anthropology museums are positioned to address. As the leaders of six key university anthropology museums, the speakers will characterize the present work and emerging goals of their institutions. Considering the changing contexts—intellectual, economic, political, technological, educational, ethical—within which museum anthropology, and anthropology more generally, is being pursued, they will also propose topics and tactics for collective work in the period ahead. While rooting their reflections in the work of their institutions, the presenters will directly address the conference theme Anthropology Matters from the distinctive vantage point of campus anthropology museums in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

• Paper Presenter: Jason Baird Jackson, Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Indiana University
• Paper Presenter: Laura NK Van Broekhoven, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
• Paper Presenter: Benjamin W. Porter, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California – Berkeley
• Paper Presenter: Robert W. Preucel, Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University
• Paper Presenter: Jennifer Kirker Priest, James B. and Rosalyn L. Pick Museum of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University
• Paper Presenter: Anthony Alan Shelton, Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia
• Paper Discussant: Alex W. Barker, Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri

Thanks go to all who supported or endorsed the session proposal, including our sponsor, the Council for Museum Anthropology. See you in Washington.