Spring lecture season begins February 4th!

Meanings in Early Celtic Art
At 6:00 PM on February 4th, Professor Peter S. Wells of the University of Minnesota will speak at the John B. Davis Lecture Hall in the Dayton Campus Center at Macalester College:
Celtic art, developed around 500 BC, is dominated by striking images of human and animal faces and figures, with elements often combined to form strange imaginary creatures. This style became the basis not only for the later Celtic art of the British Isles, but also for the art styles of much of medieval Europe. A new approach to this art, and especially to the decorative details that cover many of the ornate objects, focuses on understanding how early Europeans responded to Celtic art and what the different images and designs meant to them.
There will be an informal dinner afterward at Pad Thai Grand Café.

Professor Peter S. Wells is with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He received his degrees from the University of Tübingen and Harvard (Ph.D.), and specializes in European archaeology, especially of the Bronze & Iron Ages, the Roman Period, and the early medieval period. Dr. Wells has done extensive fieldwork in Germany and his recent main publications include “Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered” (W.W. Norton, 2008) and “Image and Response in Early Europe” (2008, Duckworth). He is an active member of the AIA, and past-president of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Society.

Upcoming Lecture on December 10

Aztec Calendrical Thought: Visual Form, Imperial Significance

At 6:00 PM on December 10^th, Dr. William L. Barnes of the University of St. Thomas will will speak at the John B. Davis Lecture Hall in the Dayton Campus Center at Macalester College on the topic of the Aztec calendar and its relation to the Aztec empire with its imperial center at Tenochtitlan. There will be an informal dinner afterward at Pad Thai Grand Café.

Dr. Barnes's primary area of research is the art of ancient Mexico, with a focus on Central Mexican sculpture and Mesoamerican manuscript painting. His current research focuses on discursive strategies used in Aztec (Tenochca Mexica) imperial art and the extend to which the Mesoamerican calendar was used in royal monuments. William's other areas of interest include Early Colonial Latin American and Pre-Columbian Andean art and architecture.

Upcoming Lecture on November 19

Rendezvous at Red Wing: Community and Aggregation at the Red Wing Locality, AD 1100 – 1400

Dr. Edward Fleming, Curator of Archaeology of the Science Museum of Minnesota, will speak at the John B. Davis Lecture Hall in the Dayton Campus Center at Macalester College on Thursday, November 19^th, about the importance of the Red Wing Locality as a regional gathering place during the period of about AD 1100 to 1400. The lecture will begin at 6:00 PM and there will be an informal dinner afterward at Pad Thai Grand Café.

As Curator of Archaeology at the Science Museum of Minnesota, Dr. Fleming is responsible for building, caring for, researching, and interpreting the museum’s archaeological collection, as well as collaborating on exhibitions and educational programming. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Minnesota. Most of his research is focused on material culture of the Late Prehistoric period in the Upper Mississippi River. For the last five years, he has been involved in field work at Red Wing Locality village sites while also working to acquire and document relevant existing archaeological collections from the Upper Midwest.

2009-2010 Lecture Season Begins!

Our lecture season is off to a rousing start with lectures by eminent scholar of Asian art and archaeology Lothar von Falkenhausen. Professor von Falkenhausen followed his Halloween lecture on Chinese bronzes at the MIA with an impromptu tour of the bronze galleries (pictured here), which was a terrific complement to the lecture and a wonderful opportunity to get an expert tour of part of the MIA’s stellar Asian collection! On Nov. 2, Professor von Falkenhausen delivered two additional lectures – one at the University of Minnesota and another at Macalester College. We would like to thank Professor von Falkenhausen for speaking on a variety of topics and AIA-MN would also like to thank the Art and Art History Departments at Macalester College and the University of St. Thomas for making Professor von Falkenhausen’s visit possible.

New Lecture: The Politics of Archaeology in Modern China

If you missed Lothar von Falkenhausen's fascinating lecture on Chinese Bronzes - or want to hear more - he will give an additional public lecture on Monday, Nov. 2. Macalester College (4:45 – 6:00, ART 113, Macalester College) on The Politics of Archaeology in Modern China:

The practice of archaeology in China today is inseparable from its sociopolitical conditions. This lecture explores the agenda of archaeologists and their sponsors since the introduction of modern scientific archaeology into China during the 1920s, and the continuing frictions between this modern archaeology and traditional antiquarianism and text-based historiography. The ongoing contention over the interpretation of archaeological artifacts forms part of a passionate debate about cultural self-identification and China’s place in the modern world.

Lecture on Chinese Bronzes

New Light on the First Archaeological Discovery of Chinese Bronzes

On Saturday, October 31^st, Dr. Lothar von Falkenhausen comes to the Minneapolis Art Museum from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA to speak about his work on an assemblage of bronzes excavated at Xinzheng, China, in 1923. This lecture is co-sponsored by Macalester College and the University of St. Thomas. The lecture will take place in the Pillsbury Auditorium at 11:00 AM and will be followed an informal lunch with the speaker at Christos Restaurant.

Dr. von Falkenhausen is Professor of Chinese Archaeology and Art History and Associate Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, where he has taught since 1993. His specialty is East Asian archaeology, with an emphasis on the great Bronze Age of China (ca. 2000-200 BC). He obtained an MA in East Asian Studies (1982) and a PhD in anthropology (1988) from Harvard University; he also attended the University of Bonn (1977-79), Peking University (1979-81), and Kyôto University (1984-86). Before joining the faculty at UCLA, Professor von Falkenhausen taught at Stanford University and the University of California, Riverside. He has, moreover, held visiting professorships at numerous institutions in Europe and Asia. He has published more than one hundred articles, books, reviews, and edited volumes; the two most important being two books, Suspended Music: Chime Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China (1993) and Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000-250 BC): The Archaeological Evidence (2006). Since 1999, he has served as the American co-Principal Investigator of UCLA's joint field project with Peking University, entitled “Landscape Archaeology and Ancient Salt Production in the Upper Yangzi River Basin” and as co-editor of the bilingual series Salt Archaeology in China (2006-). He is also the founding co-editor of the Journal of East Asian Archaeology (1999-).

The 2008-09 Minnesota AIA lecture season ended with Cori Wegener's lecture on Cultural Property at War: Lessons from the Iraq Museum, followed by a brief candlelight vigil in remembrance of the looting of the Iraq Museum and the danger that looting presents to cultural heritage worldwide. We were privileged to hear Cori’s first hand account of reconstruction after the looting and the subsequent activities of the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield.

We would like to thank all of our wonderful speakers for sharing their time, research and insights with us. We would also like to thank the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Macalester College and Concordia College for donating lecture space and the Classical and Near Eastern Studies department at the University of Minnesota for underwriting printing and postage costs for the newsletter. And finally, we would like to thank all of our members for their continued support of the AIA.

We look forward to more fascinating lectures in 2009-10 - please check back later this summer for next's season's schedule!