From ‘Artifact’ to ‘Art’: 20th Century Transformations of Ethnographic Objects

Nancy Lutkehaus is professor of anthropology, gender studies, & political science at USC and co-director of USC’s Center for Visual Anthropology. Her research interests include Melanesian gender relations, political and economic anthropology, religion, and the history of anthropology. In addition to her regional interest in Oceania, she has conducted research on the role of community-based organizations in Kenya concerned with homeless adolescent girls and HIV/AIDS. She recently published Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon (2008), a cultural history of the anthropologist Margaret Mead and her engagement with American media. She is currently writing a book about the cultural history of the display of non-Western art in American fine art museums. A polymathic practitioner, in addition to her printed work, she also made a video “'Finishing 'Apui's Name': Death and Mortuary Ritual on Manam Island.”