Friends of Ethnic Art Lecture
by Dr. Herbert “Skip” Cole
Well-known writer and teacher of African art, Dr. Herbert Cole was among the first art historians to write primarily from his own fieldwork. Although his first love has been the arts of West Africa, he has increasingly been able to take a “big picture” view of multiple cultures, describing how art objects and rituals — especially masquerades — make belief systems visible and help order human society.
Cole’s talk features highlights of his fieldwork and exhibitions plus some of his pet peeves and crazy experiences — and stunning photographs: objects, art and architecture in African life and ceremony in Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Cote d’Ivoie and Kenya.
Curator of twelve exhibitions of African art and author, co-author, or editor of nine books, Cole was the recipient of a Leadership Award, for lifetime achievement, by the Arts Council of the African Studies Association in 2001.
As an emeritus professor, lecturing and consulting a bit and sometimes advising museums such as the de Young, “Skip” Cole founded a “friends of Africa” group in Santa Barbara to raise money for varied NGOs headquartered there. Among his favorite pastimes, as Kofi Cole, is whittling exquisite miniatures of classic African masks and figures, with amazing detail and accuracy. These will be on view after his talk (and for sale, benefitting a fellowship set up to honor his son, killed in Uganda two years ago). For a preview of Skip’s carvings, visit koficoleart.com on the web.
Friends of Ethnic Art Lecture
by Ruth B. Phillips, Professor of Art History at Carleton University
Author of several books and one of the leading researchers of historical Native American art of the Woodlands, Professor Phillips will discuss the major collections that have come from the period in order to demonstrate two different collecting paradigms and the contrasting experiences of Indigenous life that lie behind them.
by Mark Rapoport
Mark Rapoport, MD was first exposed to the tribal art of Viet Nam (and to tribal art as a whole) in June of 1969. The war in Viet Nam was at its most intense, most physicians in the southern part had been drafted into the military, and few remained to care for the civilians injured in the war or suffering from the ills of a poor third-world country. The AMA had been sending 100 US doctors each year to work for two months in civilian facilities, but Mark became the first medical student to be included.
Though working mostly in the municipal hospital in Danang, he did some work with the “montagnards” in the Central Highlands. This first, intense exposure to a tribal environment made a deep impression on him- a sense that a many people still inhabit an environment vastly different – and vastly more difficult – than that of his native New York. Medical work in Nigeria (at the end of the Biafran war) and the highlands of Guatemala fed his curiosity about tribal cultures and fostered a passion for studying and collecting the material culture of tribal societies.
Mark focused on African objects while living in New York City from 1973 to 2000, but his focus shifted entirely to the artifacts of the 53 ethnic minorities of Viet Nam in 2001. In that year, he and his wife (Jane Hughes, a public manager) moved to Hanoi. Their two children were off to college and the world, and their new-found freedom opened up the possibility of living and working abroad. All four family members had visited Hanoi as tourists in the 1990s, and all four had fallen in love with it. The family vote on choosing a new home was unanimous – Hanoi, 4 votes, the rest of the world, zero votes.
Mark and Jane began work on two medical projects. Jane headed the office of the Population Council in Viet Nam and Mark was working on a research project regarding the legacy of Agent Orange and certain birth defects. In his off hours, he visited mountain villages and city shops to collect artifacts from the ethnic minorities in the northern mountains and in the Central highlands – about 15,000 objects in all.
When the research project ended in 2005, his wife “suggested” that he reinvent himself as a dealer, as well as a collector, of the objects he loved, studied and collected. With a Vietnamese business partner, he founded 54 Traditions Gallery in Hanoi (a reference to the official number of ethnic groups in Viet Nam).
The gallery has flourished since then, and Mark’s work has extended to writing, speaking, working with museums in Viet Nam and abroad, sponsoring Vietnamese artisans for the Santa Fe Folk-art Market, and distributing reading glasses to mountain-dwelling older women to allow them to return to embroidering, a good source of income for people still very much at the edge of poverty.
Mark has agreed to talk to us about the tribal art of Viet Nam and his involvement with it. He will speak to us informally, in a talk illustrated by 100 or so objects from his collection.
by Vincas P. Steponaitis, Professor of Anthropology & Chair and Director Research Laboratories of Archaeology, University of North Carolina
“He will be reviewing his collaborative studies on large effigy pipes, usually made of stone, that are typically found in the trans-Appalachian South during the Mississippi period (AD 1000-1500).
Although their geographical distribution is wide, many of these pipes are made of a particular type of rock: the Glendon Limestone, which outcrops prominently near Vicksburg, Mississippi. This finding suggests the pipes were made in the Lower Mississippi Valley and transported elsewhere. Narrowing the source further allows us to examine questions of style and iconography. The pipes depict a restricted set of themes – including supernatural creatures and humans in crouching poses – related to Native religious beliefs and practices.”
25th Annual Elizabeth and Lewis K. Land Memorial Lecture
by Dr. Michael D. Coe
The Pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica shared fundamental concepts of time, space, and the universe with the cultures of East and Southeast Asia. The yet unsolved problem is whether these similarities are the result of very ancient migrations across the Bering Land Bridge, or of more direct sea contact across the Pacific at some later date. Although this topic is disdained by modern archaeological scholarship, the remarkable parallels between such widely separated cultures still demand explanation.
– Dr. Coe is Charles J. McCurdy Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, Yale University. Archaeologist and prolific author, his research focuses on Pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica, especially the Olmec and the Maya, and on the Khmer civilization of Cambodia. His latest book is Royal Cities of the Ancient Maya, (with photographer Barry Brukoff). He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1986.