North America

2023 Nov 15

Caring for Navajo Culture: In Museums and Beyond

6:00pm to 8:00pm

Location: 

Online and Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA and Peabody Museum, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA

navajo wedding basket.

Join Stephanie Mach (Diné), Peabody Museum Curator of North American Collections and Diné (Navajo) guests for a panel conversation about the ways they each care for Navajo cultural heritage within their various areas of work and interest.... Read more about Caring for Navajo Culture: In Museums and Beyond

Manifest: Thirteen Colonies
Wendel White. 2024. Manifest: Thirteen Colonies, Pp. 298. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Radius Books and Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOKAbstract

Manifest | Thirteen Colonies is a photographic project and journey through the repositories of African American material culture found in libraries, museums, and archives of the original thirteen English colonies and Washington, DC. Conceived by photographer Wendel A. White, this project is a personal reliquary of the remarkable evidence of Black agency and racial oppression stored in public collections. Accompanying his imagery, White discusses his approach to finding, selecting, and photographing artifacts—from rare singular objects to more quotidian materials—and highlights their significance as forensic evidence of Black life and history in the United States. 

Manifest: Thirteen Colonies will be open to the public at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University from May 18, 2024-April 13, 2025.

Wendel A. White (b. 1956, Newark, NJ) is currently Distinguished Professor of Art at Stockton University and has taught photography at the School of Visual Arts; The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art; the International Center of Photography; and the Rochester Institute of Technology. His work has received various awards and fellowships, including: Doctor of Arts (hc), Oakland University; Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography; Bunn Lectureship in Photography, Bradley University; three artist fellowships from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts; Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; and New Works Photography Fellowship from En Foco Inc. His work is represented in museum and corporate collections, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; among many others.


 
Zuni, Hopi, Copan: Early Anthropology at Harvard, 1890–1893
John Gundy Owens. 4/18/2023. Zuni, Hopi, Copan: Early Anthropology at Harvard, 1890–1893. Edited by Curtis M Hinsley, Pp. 360. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press and Dumbarton Oaks Publications. BUY THIS BOOKAbstract

Zuni, Hopi, Copan: Early Anthropology at Harvard, 1890–1893 publishes one hundred letters from John Gundy Owens to Deborah Harker Stratton, currently held in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. Owens was one of the first graduate students in anthropology at Harvard; his poignant letters to “Miss Debbie” trace a budding relationship of affection in late Victorian America and offer vivid, highly entertaining accounts of his fieldwork at Zuni pueblo in New Mexico, Hopi mesa villages in Arizona, and the Maya site of Copan in Honduras.

Tragically, Owens died at age twenty-seven in Copan; Stratton never married and kept the letters until her own death, nearly fifty years later. Introductory essays by Curtis M. HinsleyLouis A. Hieb, and Barbara W. Fash contextualize the annotated letters and shed new light on early anthropological training in the United States.

Audio: Tornadoes, Twin Towers, and Hurricanes: 20 Years of Urban Disaster Clean-up

Roughly every five years since 1992, the United States has experienced major urban destruction, both natural and man-made. Even before the shock has passed, dealing with trash and rubble is a critical part of post-disaster response. How do cities clean up?

Tornadoes, Twin Towers, and Hurricanes: 20 Years of Urban Disaster Clean-up

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Standing Bear’s Pipe-Tomahawk Returned to the Ponca Tribe

June 15, 2022


On Friday, June 3, 2022, a delegation from the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, including several members of Tribal Council and staff, visited the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University for a ceremony returning the pipe-tomahawk owned by Chief Standing Bear to the Ponca Tribe. They were joined there by a delegation from the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, celebrating the return of this piece of heritage to the Tribal nation.
 
The pipe-tomahawk was originally gifted to Standing Bear's attorney John Lee Webster, one of Standing Bear's lawyers in the landmark...

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