Fred Myers
Silver Professor and Chair
Department of Anthropology
New York University
25 Waverly Place
New York, NY 10003
Ph: 212.998.8555
fred.myers@nyu.edu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Selected Publications in Full-Text:

F. Myers Aboriginal Art Interview with A. Duranti

Interview Transcript

Publications

Books:

1986 Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines. Smithsonian Institution Press, Wash., D.C. (reprinted in paperback by University of California Press, 1991)
----- and D. Brenneis, eds.
1984 Dangerous Words: Language and Politics in the Pacific. New York: New York University Press. (reprinted by Waveland Press, 1991)
----- and Susan Harding eds.
1994 Further Inflections: Toward Ethnographies of the Future. Special Issue, Cultural Anthropology, volume 9(3)
----- and G. Marcus, eds.
1995 The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Anthropology and Art Berkeley: University of California Press.
2001 The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture. Edited volume. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
2002 Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. Durham: Duke University Press.
Theses
1976 To Have and to Hold: A Study of Persistence and Change in Pintupi Social Life. Ph.D. Thesis, Bryn Mawr College.
1972 What Men Do. M.A. Thesis, Bryn Mawr College.

 

 

Publications

Articles:


------- and Faye Ginsburg
Nd “A History of Aboriginal Futures.” Critique of Anthropology. In press.
------- and Lea McChesney
Nd “Writing Art and the Transfiguration of the Object.” Ms. Submitted to the Journal of Material Culture.
Nd “Collecting Aboriginal Art in the Australian Nation-state: Two Case Studies.” Ms. Submitted to Visual Anthropology Review.
Nd “Tradition, Indigenous Being, and Acrylic Painting: an Australian Story.” In E. Venbrux, P. Rosi, and R. Welsch, eds. Exploring World Art. Waveland Press. In press. (revision of “Unsettled Business”)
Nd “’Primitivism,’ Anthropology and the Category of ‘Primitive Art’.” In Handbook of Material Culture. Chris Tilley, Susanne Kuechler, Michael Rowlands, Webb Keane and Patricia Spyer, eds. Sage Press. (in press)
------- in collaboration with Jeremy Long
Nd “In Recognition: The Gift of Painting.” In Hetti Perkins, ed. One Sun, One Moon:
Indigenous Art in Australia. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales. In press.
Nd “The Complicity of Cultural Production: The Contingencies of Performance in Globalizing Museum Practices.” In Ivan Karp and Corinne Kratz, eds. Museum Frictions. Routledge Press. In press.
2005 “Some Properties of Art and Culture.” In Daniel Miller, ed. Materiality. Durham: Duke
University Press. In press. (a revised version of “Ontologies of the Image.”)
2005 “Linda Syddick On Longing.” In Max Charlesworth, Francoise Dussart, and Howard
Morphy, eds. Aboriginal Religions in Australia: An Anthology of Recent Writings. Oxford:
Ashgate Press.
2005 “Some Properties of Culture and Persons.” In Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, ed. CODE:
Collaboration, Ownership and the Digital Economy. Cambridge: MIT Press.
2004 “Anthropology of the Future, Ethnographies of the Present.” Essay written for Silver Professorship.
2004 “Annette Weiner.” In Vered Amit (ed), Biographical Dictionary of Anthropology. New York: Routledge.
2004 “Comments: Social Agency and the Cultural Value(s) of the Art Object.” Special Issue of
Journal of Material Culture, volume 9 (2). Eds. Aaron Glass and Nelson Graburn.
2004 “Unsettled Business: Acrylic Painting, Tradition, and Indigenous Being.” Visual
Anthropology 17, 3-4 (special issue, Confronting World Art): 247-272. also published in Luke Taylor, ed. The Power of Knowledge and the Resonance of Tradition. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press (2005).
2004 “Ontologies Of The Image And Economies Of Exchange.” American Ethnologist,
February, volume 31 (1): 1-16.
---- and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.
2001 Interview with Annette Weiner. In F. Myers, ed. The Empire of Things. Pp. 269-313. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
2001 “Introduction: The Empire of Things.” In F. Myers, ed. The Empire of Things. Pp. 3-64. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
2001 "The Wizards of Oz? Nation, State and the Making of Aboriginal Fine Art.” In F. Myers, ed. The Empire of Things. Pp. 165-206. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
2000 "Around and About Modernity: Some Comments on Themes of Primitivism and Modernism." In Lynda Jessup, ed. Antimodernism and artistic experience : policing the boundaries of modernity. Toronto : University of Toronto Press.
2000 “In Sacred Trust: Building the Papunya Market.” In Hannah Fink and Hetti Perkins, eds. Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales.
2000 “Ways of Placemaking.” In Howard Morphy and Katherine Flynt, eds. Culture, Landscape, and the Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pps. 72-110.
2000 "Traffic in Culture: On Knowing Pintupi Painting." In T. Smith, ed., Impossible Presence: Surface and Screen in the Photogenic Era. Sydney: Power Institute Publications and Chicago: University of Chicago Press..
1999 “Of Objects on the Loose.” Ethnos, vol. 6 (2). Special Issue: Objects on the Loose. Guest editor, Kenneth George.
1999 "Pintupi-Speaking Aborigines of Australia's Western Desert." In Richard Lee and Richard
Daly, eds. The Encyclopedia of Hunter Gatherers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1999 “Aesthetics and Practice: A Local Art History of Pintupi Painting.” In H. Morphy and M. Boles, eds. The Art of Place: Dialogues with the Kluge-Ruhe Collection of Australian Aboriginal Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
--- and T. O Beidelman
1998 Obituary: Annette B. Weiner, American Anthropologist Newsletter, 39, No. 2: 27.
--- and T.O. Beidelman
1998 Obituary of Annette B. Weiner, American Anthropologist, 100 (3).
1998 “Uncertain Regard: Understanding an Exhibition of Aboriginal Acrylic Painting in France.” Ethnos 63 (1): 1-40
1998 “Question de Regard: Les expositions d’art aborigene australien en France.” Terrain, 30,
mars: 95-111. A longer version in English appears in Ethnos, 63.
--- and Rayna Rapp
1996 “Producing and Mediating Science as a Worldview in Post-War American: Two Interviews.
In G. Marcus, ed. Connected: Engagements with Media. Late Editions, Volume 3. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. Pp. 349-374.
1995 “Re/Writing the Primitive: Art Criticism and the Circulation of Aboriginal Painting." In
Irving Lavin, ed., Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from the Outside. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. 65-84.
---- and G. Marcus
1995 “The Traffic in Art and Culture: Introduction." In G. Marcus and F. Myers, eds., The Traffic in Culture. University of California Press. Pp. 1-51.
1995 Review essay: The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History. (Essay review of
museum exhibit.) American Anthropologist.
1994 "Beyond the Intentional Fallacy: Art Criticism and the Ethnography of Australian Aboriginal Acrylic Painting." Visual Anthropology Review, Spring 10 (1): 10-43.
1994 "Culture-Making: Performing Aboriginality in the Asia Society Gallery." American Ethnologist 21(4) 679-699.
1993 "Place, Identity, and Exchange: The Transformation of Nurturance to Social Reproduction over the Life-Cycle in a Kin-Based Society." In J. Fajans, ed., Exchanging Products: Producing Exchange. Oceania Monograph, 43. Pp. 33-57.
1991 "Representing Culture: The Production of Discourse(s) for Aboriginal Acrylic Paintings." Cultural Anthropology, 6 (1):26-62. (reprinted in Rereading Cultural Anthropology, G. Marcus, ed. Durham: Duke University Press. 1992 and in The Traffic in Culture, Marcus and Myers, eds)
1991 "Australie." In P. Bonte and M. Izard et al (eds), Dictionnaire de L'Ethnologie et de
L'Anthropologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
1989 "Truth, Beauty, and Pintupi Painting." Visual Anthropology, vol. 2, no. 2: 163-195.
1988 "The Logic and Meaning of Anger among Pintupi Aborigines." Man, 23: 589-610.
1988 "Locating Ethnographic Practice: Romance, Reality, and Politics in the Outback." American Ethnologist, 15: 609-24.
1988 "Critical Trends in the Study of Hunter-Gatherers." Annual Review of Anthropology, vol 17: 261-82. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews, Inc.
1988 "Burning the Truck and Holding the Country: Forms of Property, Time, and the Negotiation of Identity among Pintupi Aborigines." In T. Ingold, D. Riches, and J. Woodburn (eds), Hunter- Gatherers, II: Property, Power and Ideology. London: Berg Publishing.
(longer version [In] E. Wilmsen, ed., We Are Here. Berkeley: University of California Press.)
1988 "From Ethnography to Metaphor: Recent Films from David and Judith MacDougall." Cultural Anthropology, 3: 204-17
1986 "Reflections on a meeting: Structure, language, and the polity in a small-scale society," American Ethnologist, 13: 431-447. (reprinted in, The Matrix of Language: Contemporary Linguistic Anthropology, Donald Brenneis and Ronald Macaulay, eds. Boulder: Westview Press. 1996.)
1986 "The Politics of Representation: Australian Aborigines and Anthropological Discourse." American Ethnologist, 13: 138-53.
1985 "Illusion and Reality: Aboriginal Self-Determination in Central Australia." In C. Schrire and R. Gordon, eds., The Future of Former Foragers. Cambridge: Cultural Survival. pp 109-121.
------ and Donald Brenneis
1984 "Introduction: Language and Politics in the Pacific." In D. Brenneis and F. Myers, eds., Dangerous Words.
------ and Bette Clark
1983 A Claim to Areas of Traditional Land by the Warlpiri, Kukatja, and Ngarti. Alice Springs:
Central Land Council.
1982 "Always Ask: Resource Use and Landownership among the Pintupi of Central Australia." In N. Williams and E. Hunn, eds., Resource Managers: North American and Australian Hunter-Gatherers. Boulder: Westview Press. (republished by Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 1986)
1982 " Ideology and Experience: the Cultural Basis of Pintupi Politics." In M. Howard, ed., Aboriginal Power in Australian Society). Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.
1980a "The Cultural Basis of Politics in Pintupi Life," Mankind, 12: 197-214.
1980 "A Broken Code: Pintupi Political Theory and Contemporary Social Life," Mankind, 12:
311-26.
1979 "Emotions and the Self: A Theory of Personhood and Political Order among the Pintupi," Ethos, 7: 343-70.
Reviews
2004 Review of “Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific.” The Contemporary Pacific.
1999 Review of Ethnography Through Thick and Thin, by George E. Marcus. American Anthropologist. In press.
1997 Review Essay of Looking High and Low: Art and Cultural Identity, by Brenda Bright and
Liza Bakewell. American Anthropologist, 99: 23-25.
1996 Review of Knowledge and Secrecy in Aboriginal Religion by Iam Keen. Oceania.
1995 Review of Ancestral Connections, by Howard Morphy. American Ethnographist.
1992 Film Review of “Djungguwan at Gurka'wuy.” Directed by Ian Dunlop. American Anthropologist
1990 Review essay of History and Magical Power in a Chinese Community, by P. Steven Sangren. Journal of Ritual Studies.
1989 Review essay of Children of the Desert II: Myths and Dreams of the Aborigines of Central Australia, by Geza Roheim. Edited and introduced by John Morton and W. Muensterberger. Australian Aboriginal Studies, no. 2: 85-89.
1988 Review of Uluru: An Aboriginal History of Ayers Rock by Robert Layton. Journal of the Polynesian Society.
1988 Film Review of “Cycle.” American Anthropologist, 90: 245-6
1987 Review of The Yolngu and Their Land by Nancy Williams. American Anthropologist, 89: 755-6
1986 Review of The Australian Aborigines: A Portrait of Their Society by Kenneth Maddock. Oceania, 57: 55-58.
1986 Review of Daughters of the Dreaming by Diane Bell. Man, 21 (2).
1984 Review of The Camp at Wallaby Cross by B. Sansom. Language in Society, 13: 254-59.
1979 Review of The Mardudjara Aborigines by R. Tonkinson. American Anthropologist, 81: 423.
Film
2001 From the Dreaming: Aboriginal Art Arrives in New York. With Trish Rosen and Lisa Stefanoff. 58 mins. Video. NTSC.