On May 5, CRACIA continues its virtual meeting series with a presentation by Glenn Shepard.

From war club to camera: Designing an exhibit on contemporary Kayapo culture for the American Museum of Natural History
Glenn H. Shepard Jr. Goeldi Museum / American Museum of Natural History

For the past semester, I have been working with a team of Columbia University master’s students and American Museum staff members to develop an exhibit case on contemporary Amazonia to add to the existing Hall of Amazonian Peoples at AMNH, originally designed and curated by Robert Carneiro in the late 1980s. The idea behind the exhibit was to breathe new life into the anthropological theories and museum practices on display in the Hall of Amazonian peoples at AMNH. Given the prominence of the Kayapo warrior manikin in the existing exhibit, and my recent work on "Kayapo video warriors”, we chose to focus the exhibit case on the creative ways the Kayapo people have engaged with video technologies and social movements in their ongoing fight for their lands, culture and rights. In this presentation I will discuss some of the anthropological questions and research that went into producing this exhibit, and provide you with a sneak preview of the virtual exhibit case we plan to debut at the end of May, with a physical exhibit case to be installed hopefully later in the Fall.

See here for more information and contact cracia.info (at) gmail.com for information on attending this virtual meeting, or to participate in future discussions.