In conjunction with the exhibition Mapa Wiya (Your Map’s Not Needed): Australian Aboriginal Art from the Fondation Opale, professor and author Fred Myers will discuss the invitation of Indigenous art – the invitation it carries to look further, to see more than “pretty pictures,” but rather to see the ways in which Indigenous Australians know their world, their country, and have given their knowledge and experience expression in a variety of forms that have an inspiration in Indigenous cultural life and a history in engaging with the non-Indigenous world.

About the speaker:
Fred Myers, Silver Professor of Anthropology at NYU, has been doing research with Pintupi-speaking Indigenous Australian people on their art, their relationships to land, and other matters since 1973. Myers has published two books, Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines (1986) and Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art (2002), and several edited volumes, including The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Anthropology and Art (co-edited with George Marcus, 1995), The Empire of Things (2001), and The Difference that Identity Makes (coedited with Tim Rowse and Laurie Bamblett, 2019).

This program is free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first-come first-serve basis. Further information regarding accessibility and parking can be found here.