Africa

Nyae Nyae !Kung Beliefs and Rites
Lorna J. Marshall. 1/24/2000. Nyae Nyae !Kung Beliefs and Rites, Pp. 400. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOKAbstract

With style and depth, Lorna Marshall leads the reader through the intricacies, ambiguities, and silences of !Kung beliefs. Her narrative, based on fieldwork among the Bushmen of the Kalahari in the early 1950s, brings into focus a way of life that appears to have existed for millennia. She presents the culture, beliefs, and spirituality of one of the last true hunting-and-gathering peoples by focusing on members of different bands as they reveal their own views. This account, with photography by John Marshall, presents a system of beliefs, one in which personified deities and unpersonifled supernatural forces (n!ow and n/um) interact with man and the natural world. The !Kung believe that this interaction accounts for much of the mystery of life and the vicissitudes of the good and evil that befall mankind. The book also depicts an egalitarian lifestyle based on sharing and group awareness, a lifestyle that has not survived intact the increasing integration of the Bushmen into the modern world.

A companion volume to her 1976 work, The !Kung of Nyae Nyae, this book was published to mark the one-hundredth birthday of Lorna Marshall (1898 – 2002).

Artistry of the Everyday: Beauty and Craftsmanship in Berber Art
Lisa Bernasek. 12/15/2008. Artistry of the Everyday: Beauty and Craftsmanship in Berber Art, Pp. 125. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOKAbstract

Foreword by Susan Gilson Miller

Photographs by Hillel S. Burger & Mark Craig

Artistry of the Everyday presents the Peabody Museum’s collection of arts from the Berber-speaking regions of North Africa. The book gives an overview of Berber history and culture, focusing on the rich aesthetic traditions of Amazigh (Berber) craftsmen and women. From ancient times to the present day, working with limited materials but an extensive vocabulary of symbols and motifs, Imazighen (Berbers) across North Africa have created objects that are both beautiful and practical. Intricately woven textiles, incised metal locks and keys, painted pottery and richly embroidered leather bags are just a few examples of objects from the Peabody Museum’s collections that are highlighted in the color plates. The book also tells the stories of the collectors—both world-traveling Bostonians and Harvard-trained anthropologists—who brought these objects from Morocco or Algeria to their present home in Cambridge in the early twentieth century. The generosity of these donors has resulted in a collection of Berber arts, especially from the Tuareg regions of southern Algeria, that rivals that of major European and North African museums.

Avenue Patrice Lumumba
Guy Tillim. 1/9/2009. Avenue Patrice Lumumba, Pp. 128. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press.Abstract

Foreword by Robert Gardner

“Guy Tillim … combines a profound sense of historic documentation of African countries ravaged by conflicts and tragedies of all kinds and a very stringent formal aesthetic devoid of all mannerism.”'
—Michket Krifa

As the first recipient of the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography at the Peabody Museum, Guy Tillim traveled through Angola, Mozambique, Congo, and Madagascar, documenting the grand colonial architecture and how it has become part of a contemporary African stage. His photographs reveal the decay and detritus of colonialism in Western and Southern Africa and convey an acute sense of humanity.

Tillim is an award-winning photographer from South Africa. His photographic documentation of social conflict and inequality in the countries of Africa has been exhibited in more than a dozen countries and widely published.


Co-published with Prestel Verlag. 

joana choumali.

Joana Choumali Named 2020 Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography

June 2, 2020

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University, is pleased to announce the selection of the 2020 Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography. Following an international search, the Gardner Fellowship committee awarded the fellowship to photographer Joana Choumali. The fellowship provides a $50,000 stipend to begin or complete a proposed project followed by the publication of a book. Choumali (1974– ), a visual artist and photographer born and based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (formerly called the Ivory Coast), will use the fellowship to create Yougou-Yougou (Secondhand...

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