Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society

This interdisciplinary research project investigates the relationship of cultural practices to episodes of disaster in the modern period. Cultural practices such as art-making, storytelling, memorializing, and collecting are vital fields through which communities make sense of disastrous events, register their impact, and envision recovery. However, disasters also call in to question the relevance of cultural practices to urgent matters of bare survival. While much scholarship is premised on the first claim, less work has taken up the second challenge. We ask: Is culture useful in disastrous times? If so, how and why? In what ways have cultural practices contributed to disaster? In what ways have they forestalled it? We seek to address these questions historically, assembling a group of scholars across fields working on historic episodes of cultural production in times of crisis to generate robust frameworks for articulating the significance of cultural life where it is often assumed. We also seek to understand these questions historiographically, drawing from the insights of historical narratives to develop strategies for the future of our own work as cultural historians in the face of the disasters that bear on the contemporary world. The centerpiece of this project are two workshops that take on the historical and historiographical dimensions of these questions in turn. These workshops will form the basis of a new network of cultural historians, not currently manifest as such, devoted to historically informed experimentation with how cultural history might develop as the conditions in which we do our scholarship continue to transform.

When Christine Mehring first saw Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic sculpture in 2011, it was, as she later wrote in Artforum, “ceding its precarious nature as art.” Commissioned as a “happening” by the Museum of Contemporary Art in January 1970, the concrete-encased 1957 Cadillac was donated to the University in June of that year—and then suffered from decades of weather exposure on a neglected patch of grass before being relocated to a storage facility. Mehring’s first encounter with the sculpture raised the questions at the core of the Material Matters research project. How do the changing qualities of materials alter the way humans experience and interpret art? At what point does a work of art cease to be art? Was it too late to conserve Concrete Traffic? If not, what form should the conservation take?

“I knew from the very beginning that I could not do this alone,” Mehring said. “It’s clear to me that the funding and the imprimatur from the Neubauer Collegium put the proper conservation and return of the sculpture within reach.”

Conserving the work required sustained collaboration among art historians, who studied Vostell’s intentions and situated the project within its historical and theoretical contexts, as well as structural engineers and art and technical objects conservators familiar with nontraditional art materials such as concrete and auto parts. A series of workshops and symposia provided the team with the insights and tools necessary to clean and patch the concrete; repair its underside and reinforce the structure without altering its original form; and identify a public site that would align with the artist’s vision and protect the work from further deterioration. Discussions linked these practical considerations to theoretical questions about aesthetic judgment, artistic intention, the ephemerality of performance art, and cultural translation and heritage.

Two exhibitions in the Neubauer Collegium gallery emerged directly from the Material Matters project. No Longer Art: Salvage Art Institute inaugurated the exhibitions program in the 2015 Spring Quarter with an exploration of works divested of value by insurance companies following accidental damage. Organized in partnership with Elka Krajewska, founder of the Salvage Art Institute, the show questioned the border between art and non-art, prompting visitors to consider how shifts in materiality affect the meaning, aesthetic experience, and commodification of artworks.

Fantastic Architecture: Vostell, Fluxus, and the Built Environment (Winter 2016) contextualized Concrete Traffic in relation to other works by Vostell and his peers in the Fluxus art movement, many of whom shared his interest in disrupting the urban environment through aesthetic experience. Thematically linked to concurrent exhibitions at the Smart Museum and the Special Collections Research Center, Fantastic Architecture was part of the University’s Concrete Happenings celebration, a nine-month series of performances, film screenings, lectures, workshops, and happenings that brought together academics and members of the public to explore the ways that contemporary art can form and transform its publics.

The Material Matters project galvanized an institutional interest in art conservation at the University. In recognition of the value and material sensitivities of its public art collection, the University has hired a full-time public art curator and a conservation manager for its public art collection. The Provost’s Office has convened a Public Art Committee to articulate and advance a campus art policy, oversee sitings and re-sitings of public artworks, evaluate acquisitions, and advise on communications and programming strategies. The project has also created new teaching and career development opportunities. Concrete Traffic is being taught in the recently revamped College Core class “Introduction to Art.” And two annual, newly developed Suzanne Deal Booth Conservation Seminars introduce students to the methods, theories, and strategies of conservation science. Leaders in the Department of Art History, the Institute for Molecular Engineering, and the Humanities Division have identified investment in the growing field of conservation science as a priority.

“If the sciences forge new understanding of materials and the environment at all scales, the arts and humanities can help us grasp the hermeneutic implications and practical applications of that work,” Mehring said. “Fundamentally interdisciplinary in their reach, conservation and conservation science are quintessentially UChicago fields that forge these very connections.”

The NigerHeritage project involved rethinking the design and function of two cultural facilities and one paleontological site—a museum, a cultural center for nomadic peoples, and a fossil field site—for preservation of Niger’s paleontological, archaeological, and cultural heritage. Research, discussion, and forums held in the U.S. and Niger—involving scientists, social scientists, architects, planners, and the public—aimed to forge consensus plans for these cultural initiatives, the ultimate goals of which include long-term preservation and celebration of unique cultural heritage, engagement of surrounding communities, and novel architectural solutions that are sustainable and environmentally sensitive.

This project involved rethinking the design and function of a museum, a cultural center for nomadic peoples, and local field stations—each with a distinct role in the preservation of Niger’s unique paleontological, archaeological and cultural heritage. Scientists, social scientists, architects, planners and the public in Niger collaborated to develop the mission and plans for these innovative, energy-efficient cultural initiatives, which will shepherd the repatriation and long-term stewardship of priceless artifacts originating from the region.

An ambitious collaboration that brought together anthropologists, visual artists, curators, scholars of historic preservation, lawyers specializing in Indigenous rights, and tribal elders from across North America, the Open Fields project (2017–2019) helped to redefine the concept of “natural history.”

Museums that display Native artifacts are increasingly compelled to reconsider curatorial and conservation practices that do not adequately reflect Indigenous peoples’ understanding of their own heritage. As these museums look to the future, how should they present Native material culture in ways that are culturally appropriate and stimulating to both the general public and Native populations? And what normative frameworks would help assess and, if necessary, adjudicate Indigenous people’s ethical, legal, and religious claims to the cultural property currently held in these museums?

The site and subject of this crucial inquiry was Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, which houses one of the world’s largest collections of Native American artifacts and is committed to renovating its famed Hall of Native North Americans (“Great Hall”). “The Neubauer Collegium continues to be an important venue for inspiration and guidance as the Field Museum plans for the wholesale revision of the public presentation of its Native American collections,” said Richard Lariviere, President and CEO of the Field Museum. “This is hard, intellectual, and impactful work—a perfect task to be engaged with the Neubauer Collegium.”

Through a series of open-ended discussions at the Neubauer Collegium and the Field Museum, the Open Fields project convened scholars, practitioners, and Indigenous leaders representing a wide range of perspectives. The participants came together to pursue two large-scale, overlapping goals: articulating a vision for the future of ethnographic museology and updating antiquated methods of conserving and preserving Indigenous material culture. In both contexts, substantive engagement with Indigenous people supports an epochal shift from a period in which natural history collections were regarded as objects of scientific inquiry toward one in which they may prompt cross-cultural encounters with increasingly diverse publics.

The project’s first event, a multi-site conference organized by Jessica Stockholder in October 2015, examined how form, symbolic meaning, and social norms interact in art and law, particularly as they relate to First Nations artwork. Over the course of two days, a group of artists, scholars, and lawyers gathered at the Neubauer Collegium, the Field Museum, the Smart Museum of Art, and the Kavi Gupta Gallery for wide-ranging discussions and exhibition tours. One of the presenters was Anna Tsouhlarakis, a multimedia artist whose work pushes viewers to confront and rethink their cultural expectations when encountering Native art. Tsouhlarakis returned to the Neubauer Collegium a year later for a solo exhibition titled She Made for Her. Presented as part of the Open Fields project, the show included three large-scale sculptures made from scrap materials sold by the furniture store IKEA. Audio recordings of Native women responding to the enigmatic works challenged traditional notions of critical authority while asserting the validity of Native aesthetic experience.

The Field Museum opened two exhibitions in the fall of 2016 that, like She Made for Her, showcased contemporary Native American art. Drawing on Tradition enlivened the Great Hall with Kanza artist Chris Pappan’s inventive take on nineteenth-century “ledger art,” featuring pencil drawings of iconic images on ledger paper, often playfully distorted to suggest public misperceptions of Native culture. Full Circle/Omani Wakan paired Lakota artist Rhonda Holy Bear’s intricately carved and beaded figures with materials she selected from the permanent collection, completing a “sacred journey” that began with Holy Bear’s childhood trips to the museum.

By creating space for Pappan and Holy Bear to honor the past while exploring new forms of creative expression, these exhibitions suggested a viable path forward for curators at natural history museums. “When we realize that Native peoples are not just the objects of ethnographic inquiry, but are audiences and contributors to the ongoing stories of these collections, all of a sudden the Field Museum itself takes on a very different layer of meaning and importance,” said Anthropology professor Justin Richland, a member of the Open Fields research team.

Field Museum curator Alaka Wali, who has partnered closely with Richland as a Visiting Fellow, believes the project fostered productive dialogue among stakeholders with distinct perspectives and interests. “Open Fields has contributed to the intellectual and theoretical foundations for the renovation by creating a neutral space for open discussion,” Wali said. She also credited the project for helping her and her colleagues secure a Mellon Foundation grant that will enable the Field Museum to implement plans for the renovation and community engagement.

Resources from the Neubauer Collegium, leveraged with external funding from the Guggenheim Foundation and the McCormick Family Foundation, have also enabled the Open Fields research team to collect and study ethnographic data related to the Pappan and Holy Bear exhibitions. At a series of workshops in the summer and fall of 2017, the team shared their initial findings with museum professionals, indigenous artists, tribal leaders, and scholars. Employing recent methodological innovations in linguistic and visual anthropology, participants supplemented their review of traditional observational data with video and audio recordings collected during the planning, production, and installation stages. These efforts helped the research team identify promising strategies for curating and conserving Native artifacts on a broad scale. They also confirmed strong interest in the approach adopted for the Pappan and Holy Bear exhibitions.

Ongoing discussions with tribal elders, museum professionals, and ethnohistorians are advancing the team’s understanding of their findings and helping the Field Museum identify the goals and imperatives for its Great Hall renovation.

The Open Fields project helped lay the groundwork for the Apsáalooke Women and Warriors exhibition, jointly organized by the Field Museum and the Neubauer Collegium. Learn more about the pathbreaking exhibition and the model it presented for a new form of partnership between cultural institutions and Indigenous communities here.

An ambitious collaboration that brought together anthropologists, visual artists, curators, scholars of historic preservation, lawyers specializing in Indigenous rights, and tribal elders from across North America, the Open Fields project (2017–2019) helped to redefine the concept of “natural history.”

Museums that display Native artifacts are increasingly compelled to reconsider curatorial and conservation practices that do not adequately reflect Indigenous peoples’ understanding of their own heritage. As these museums look to the future, how should they present Native material culture in ways that are culturally appropriate and stimulating to both the general public and Native populations? And what normative frameworks would help assess and, if necessary, adjudicate Indigenous people’s ethical, legal, and religious claims to the cultural property currently held in these museums?

The site and subject of this crucial inquiry was Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, which houses one of the world’s largest collections of Native American artifacts and is committed to renovating its famed Hall of Native North Americans (“Great Hall”). “The Neubauer Collegium continues to be an important venue for inspiration and guidance as the Field Museum plans for the wholesale revision of the public presentation of its Native American collections,” said Richard Lariviere, President and CEO of the Field Museum. “This is hard, intellectual, and impactful work—a perfect task to be engaged with the Neubauer Collegium.”

Through a series of open-ended discussions at the Neubauer Collegium and the Field Museum, the Open Fields project convened scholars, practitioners, and Indigenous leaders representing a wide range of perspectives. The participants came together to pursue two large-scale, overlapping goals: articulating a vision for the future of ethnographic museology and updating antiquated methods of conserving and preserving Indigenous material culture. In both contexts, substantive engagement with Indigenous people supports an epochal shift from a period in which natural history collections were regarded as objects of scientific inquiry toward one in which they may prompt cross-cultural encounters with increasingly diverse publics.

The project’s first event, a multi-site conference organized by Jessica Stockholder in October 2015, examined how form, symbolic meaning, and social norms interact in art and law, particularly as they relate to First Nations artwork. Over the course of two days, a group of artists, scholars, and lawyers gathered at the Neubauer Collegium, the Field Museum, the Smart Museum of Art, and the Kavi Gupta Gallery for wide-ranging discussions and exhibition tours. One of the presenters was Anna Tsouhlarakis, a multimedia artist whose work pushes viewers to confront and rethink their cultural expectations when encountering Native art. Tsouhlarakis returned to the Neubauer Collegium a year later for a solo exhibition titled She Made for Her. Presented as part of the Open Fields project, the show included three large-scale sculptures made from scrap materials sold by the furniture store IKEA. Audio recordings of Native women responding to the enigmatic works challenged traditional notions of critical authority while asserting the validity of Native aesthetic experience.

The Field Museum opened two exhibitions in the fall of 2016 that, like She Made for Her, showcased contemporary Native American art. Drawing on Tradition enlivened the Great Hall with Kanza artist Chris Pappan’s inventive take on nineteenth-century “ledger art,” featuring pencil drawings of iconic images on ledger paper, often playfully distorted to suggest public misperceptions of Native culture. Full Circle/Omani Wakan paired Lakota artist Rhonda Holy Bear’s intricately carved and beaded figures with materials she selected from the permanent collection, completing a “sacred journey” that began with Holy Bear’s childhood trips to the museum.

By creating space for Pappan and Holy Bear to honor the past while exploring new forms of creative expression, these exhibitions suggested a viable path forward for curators at natural history museums. “When we realize that Native peoples are not just the objects of ethnographic inquiry, but are audiences and contributors to the ongoing stories of these collections, all of a sudden the Field Museum itself takes on a very different layer of meaning and importance,” said Anthropology professor Justin Richland, a member of the Open Fields research team.

Field Museum curator Alaka Wali, who has partnered closely with Richland as a Visiting Fellow, believes the project fostered productive dialogue among stakeholders with distinct perspectives and interests. “Open Fields has contributed to the intellectual and theoretical foundations for the renovation by creating a neutral space for open discussion,” Wali said. She also credited the project for helping her and her colleagues secure a Mellon Foundation grant that will enable the Field Museum to implement plans for the renovation and community engagement.

Resources from the Neubauer Collegium, leveraged with external funding from the Guggenheim Foundation and the McCormick Family Foundation, have also enabled the Open Fields research team to collect and study ethnographic data related to the Pappan and Holy Bear exhibitions. At a series of workshops in the summer and fall of 2017, the team shared their initial findings with museum professionals, indigenous artists, tribal leaders, and scholars. Employing recent methodological innovations in linguistic and visual anthropology, participants supplemented their review of traditional observational data with video and audio recordings collected during the planning, production, and installation stages. These efforts helped the research team identify promising strategies for curating and conserving Native artifacts on a broad scale. They also confirmed strong interest in the approach adopted for the Pappan and Holy Bear exhibitions.

Ongoing discussions with tribal elders, museum professionals, and ethnohistorians are advancing the team’s understanding of their findings and helping the Field Museum identify the goals and imperatives for its Great Hall renovation.

The problem of archaeological looting has long vexed policymakers. But the opacity of the market for illicit antiquities makes it difficult for them to bring looting under control. Even as global demand rises and archaeological sites in war-torn regions are pillaged by terrorist groups, the search for effective policy responses remains hampered by longstanding disagreements. In particular, are legal and illegal market practices mutually dependent or largely unrelated? The Past for Sale project (2014–2017) intervened in this debate by bringing together an unprecedented constellation of researchers, policy leaders, museum curators, buyers and sellers of antiquities—including representatives of the major auction houses—and law-enforcement officials. The group worked to assemble the available empirical research in order to formulate realistic solutions for policymakers across the world.

The three-year project focused initially on clarifying the general features of the illicit antiquities market as well as local variations. Highlights from the first year included a presentation by DePaul University anthropologist Morag Kersel, who is pioneering the use of aerial drone technology to capture real-time observations of archaeological sites in the Middle East before, during, and after looting. A two-day conference brought together a group of ten leading international scholars to compare case studies on looting networks. A workshop followed at the University’s Center in Delhi that focused on the looting of idols from temples and other culturally significant sites in India.

In its second year, the project incorporated input from industry professionals, a rare intervention among scholars working on this issue. The “Dealing with Heritage” conference invited art dealers, collectors, museum directors, and top officials from Christie’s and Sotheby’s to share their views with archaeologists, anthropologists, economists, and legal scholars. Panel discussions on industry perspectives, the legal and regulatory environment, and prospects for policy collaboration sparked heated discussions among participants. The keynote address by Maxwell Anderson, former chair of the Association of Art Museum Directors, reviewed promising approaches to curbing and preventing trafficking. Anderson considered, in particular, the need for transparency, public access, due diligence, and prompt responses to claims of wrongdoing. One outcome of the event was an invitation from the editor of the International Journal of Cultural Property to the Past for Sale research team to guest-edit a special issue devoted to research from the project, forthcoming in 2018.

The project generated new tools to measure illicit markets and new modes of analysis that are scalable and replicable. The concurrent rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) brought archaeological looting to the attention of legislators who had not previously focused on the problem. Addressing the wide variation in estimates of how much ISIS was earning through the sale of looted antiquities, Fiona Greenland convened a group to model the antiquities trade in Iraq and Syria. The resultant MANTIS project, based at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, used satellite images, archaeological records, and market data to delineate ISIS’s antiquities trade network and estimate the total market value of the objects buried at ISIS-controlled sites. MANTIS research, widely cited in policy circles, served as a corrective to prior estimates and generated a new evidence-based method for determining market values.

The final year of the project focused on synthesizing its conceptual and empirical contributions and articulating new best practices for policy-makers. In the spring of 2017, Kersel and Greenland co-curated a Neubauer Collegium gallery exhibition titled The Past Sold: Case Studies in the Movement of Archaeological Objects. A multimedia display featuring aerial drone footage, photography, maps, archival documents, and Early Bronze Age pots, the exhibition added new dimension and a visual vocabulary to the research project. The exhibition also introduced the project’s findings to a broader public. The opening reception coincided with a capstone conference that included a keynote address by Richard Kurin, a longstanding government leader currently serving as the Smithsonian Institution’s Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador-at-Large.

Although it is too soon to report on the overall impact on cultural policy, the knowledge generated by the Past for Sale project is circulating broadly in academic journals and beginning to influence discussions in Washington. Larry Rothfield and Kurin are exploring the feasibility of lease programs for museums, an important innovation in dealing with black markets. And the Antiquities Coalition, a major advocacy group, has adopted tax recommendations Rothfield detailed in a briefing paper.

“All in all, the Neubauer support—both financial and logistical—has been spectacularly helpful in permitting us to think bigger and evolve our research agenda more easily than has ever been possible with any group grant I’ve been involved with,” Rothfield said.

The problem of archaeological looting has long vexed policymakers. But the opacity of the market for illicit antiquities makes it difficult for them to bring looting under control. Even as global demand rises and archaeological sites in war-torn regions are pillaged by terrorist groups, the search for effective policy responses remains hampered by longstanding disagreements. In particular, are legal and illegal market practices mutually dependent or largely unrelated? The Past for Sale project (2014–2017) intervened in this debate by bringing together an unprecedented constellation of researchers, policy leaders, museum curators, buyers and sellers of antiquities—including representatives of the major auction houses—and law-enforcement officials. The group worked to assemble the available empirical research in order to formulate realistic solutions for policymakers across the world.

The three-year project focused initially on clarifying the general features of the illicit antiquities market as well as local variations. Highlights from the first year included a presentation by DePaul University anthropologist Morag Kersel, who is pioneering the use of aerial drone technology to capture real-time observations of archaeological sites in the Middle East before, during, and after looting. A two-day conference brought together a group of ten leading international scholars to compare case studies on looting networks. A workshop followed at the University’s Center in Delhi that focused on the looting of idols from temples and other culturally significant sites in India.

In its second year, the project incorporated input from industry professionals, a rare intervention among scholars working on this issue. The “Dealing with Heritage” conference invited art dealers, collectors, museum directors, and top officials from Christie’s and Sotheby’s to share their views with archaeologists, anthropologists, economists, and legal scholars. Panel discussions on industry perspectives, the legal and regulatory environment, and prospects for policy collaboration sparked heated discussions among participants. The keynote address by Maxwell Anderson, former chair of the Association of Art Museum Directors, reviewed promising approaches to curbing and preventing trafficking. Anderson considered, in particular, the need for transparency, public access, due diligence, and prompt responses to claims of wrongdoing. One outcome of the event was an invitation from the editor of the International Journal of Cultural Property to the Past for Sale research team to guest-edit a special issue devoted to research from the project, forthcoming in 2018.

The project generated new tools to measure illicit markets and new modes of analysis that are scalable and replicable. The concurrent rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) brought archaeological looting to the attention of legislators who had not previously focused on the problem. Addressing the wide variation in estimates of how much ISIS was earning through the sale of looted antiquities, Fiona Greenland convened a group to model the antiquities trade in Iraq and Syria. The resultant MANTIS project, based at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, used satellite images, archaeological records, and market data to delineate ISIS’s antiquities trade network and estimate the total market value of the objects buried at ISIS-controlled sites. MANTIS research, widely cited in policy circles, served as a corrective to prior estimates and generated a new evidence-based method for determining market values.

The final year of the project focused on synthesizing its conceptual and empirical contributions and articulating new best practices for policy-makers. In the spring of 2017, Kersel and Greenland co-curated a Neubauer Collegium gallery exhibition titled The Past Sold: Case Studies in the Movement of Archaeological Objects. A multimedia display featuring aerial drone footage, photography, maps, archival documents, and Early Bronze Age pots, the exhibition added new dimension and a visual vocabulary to the research project. The exhibition also introduced the project’s findings to a broader public. The opening reception coincided with a capstone conference that included a keynote address by Richard Kurin, a longstanding government leader currently serving as the Smithsonian Institution’s Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador-at-Large.

Although it is too soon to report on the overall impact on cultural policy, the knowledge generated by the Past for Sale project is circulating broadly in academic journals and beginning to influence discussions in Washington. Larry Rothfield and Kurin are exploring the feasibility of lease programs for museums, an important innovation in dealing with black markets. And the Antiquities Coalition, a major advocacy group, has adopted tax recommendations Rothfield detailed in a briefing paper.

“All in all, the Neubauer support—both financial and logistical—has been spectacularly helpful in permitting us to think bigger and evolve our research agenda more easily than has ever been possible with any group grant I’ve been involved with,” Rothfield said.

Both migration and material culture have profoundly shaped societies and cultures across the globe in the modern era. This project explored the relationship between people and things in motion in order to shed light on both the dynamics of migration and the historical transformation of material culture. The research team defined migration broadly, to include intra-state, international and intra-imperial migration, as well as "forced" and "voluntary” migrations. The project's use of material culture was also inclusive, embracing the objects that furnish domestic interiors, cityscapes, tools, jewelry, books, toys, and clothing. The precise relationships between migration and material culture have varied dramatically across time, space, and political and social context. The goal of this project was to analyze and thereby be able to explain the diversity of these relationships and experiences. This project brought together curators, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists working in the United States, Europe, and Israel to consider the relationship between migration and material culture from these disciplinary perspectives. A series of papers presented at workshops organized by the research team were subsequently collected in a volume on migration and material culture titled Objects of War, published by Cornell University Press in 2018.