Claude Levi-Strauss Lecture: Iconographic and Verbal Traditions in Amazonian Cultures
Tue September 17, 2013, 5-6:30pm
Museum of Anthropology
The Museum of Anthropology is proud to present Dr. Anne-Christine Taylor, MOA’s Claude Levi-Strauss Visiting Scholar for 2013. Director of Research at France’s Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Dr. Taylor is also the Director of the Department of Research and Education at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. She has taught extensively both in France and abroad. A specialist in Indigenous Amazonian cultures, Dr. Taylor has conducted extensive fieldwork among the Achuar, a Jivaroan group from the upper Amazon, and has published widely on subjects relating to Jivaroan culture, as well as on theoretical and historical issues in anthropology, and more recently, on the role of ethnographic museums.
The aim of this presentation is to offer some elements for a discussion of indigenous Amazonian visual culture and rĂ©gimes of image-making. Following a summary review of the salient features of Amazonian art – its aniconicity, its emphasis on intricate geometric design and on elaborate ornamentation of the human body, particularly in ritual contexts – it will develop some ideas on the relation between oral traditions (particularly mythological narratives) and Amazonian practices of evoking and producing images.