Past Events

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April 9, 2022
1:00pm

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer
George F. Dales Jr. and Barbara A. Dales Professor of Anthropology
Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Date & time: April 9th, 2022 at 1:00PM PT

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A general overview of the Indus Civilization will be presented along with discussions of how archaeologists find sites, how they excavate them and how they study the artifacts that are discovered from the sites. Special focus will be on some of the traditional as well as innovative new techniques that archaeologists use to discover sites. It will also cover some important analytical approaches that are used to study different types of artifacts to gain unique information about the technologies and social organization of the ancient Indus communities.

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, is the George F. Dales Jr. and Barbara A. Dales Professor of Anthropology, at the Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of numerous books and edited volumes on the archaeology of South Asia and the Indus civilization. He has excavated key ancient cities and elucidated contemporary urban patterns in Pakistan and India. He is a leading figure in South Asian archaeology, history, and ancient civilizations.

PDF icon TFOA_Kenoyer_opt.pdf

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Contact Michelle Jacobson
Email mjacobson@ioa.ucla.edu
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March 18, 2022
11:00am to 12:00pm

Rodrigo Correa-Salas
Conservator

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The structure, materials and acoustic properties of musical instruments are diverse and delicate. These characteristics will determine whether the instrument can be played (on special occasions) or just be displayed in the gallery.

The basic knowledge of the different materials (and their combinations) with which they were built, how they were made, how they were played and on what occasions they were played offers us a good basis and help to evaluate each instrument and know how to proceed to maintain, stabilize, adjust, restore, or fix these sound machines.

Born in Santiago, Chile, Rodrigo Correa Salas comes from a family of artists.Prior to MIM, Correa worked as a luthier and instrument conservator for nearly two decades in the United States, Caribbean,Panama, and Chile. He was the official luthier of the annual Casals Festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and custodian of Maestro Casals’s violoncello in the Pablo Casals Museum.

Correa graduated from Puerto Rico’s Conservatory of Music, with a bachelor’s degree in music education and a minor in violoncello. He later obtained an associate of science degree in string instrument technology from Indiana University, while doing parallel studies in cello. He has played in various baroque, classical, and popular music groups in the United States and the Caribbean.

Correa’s role as conservator is to examine, document, restore,repair, and maintain musical instruments and other objects in MIM’s collection, while coordinating closely with the curatorial teamand collaborates in installing gallery exhibitions.

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Contact Céline Wachsmuth
Email wachsmuthc@g.ucla.edu
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March 7, 2022
4:00pm to 5:00pm

Join the UCLA Art History Department for the annual Patricia McCarron McGinn Lecture featuring Professor Glenn Wharton with his lecture Why Conserve Cultural Heritage? Reframing a Discipline.

This year’s lecture will take place virtually on Monday, March 7 from 4 to 5:30 pm.  Please RSVP in advance to receive a Zoom link.

Please CLICK HERE TO RSVP 

About Dr. Wharton

Glenn Wharton is Professor of Art History and Professor of the Conservation of Material Culture, as well as Chair of the UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage.  Professor Wharton most recently taught at New York University as Clinical Professor in Museum Studies; in addition to his academic positions, Wharton is an experienced art conservator with an extensive background in archaeological, sculpture, and time-based media conservation, who has worked and consulted at such museums as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Wharton received his Ph.D. in Conservation and Archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London in 2005. He has received, amongst others, a Digital Pedagogy Grant from New York University (2018), a Getty Conservation Institute Guest Scholar Fellowship (2017), a College Art Association (CAA) / Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation (2015), and the Historic Hawai’i Foundation Preservation Media Award for The Painted King: Art, Activism, & Authenticity in Hawai’i (2012).  His research areas of interest include archaeological conservation, illicit trade, cultural heritage management, contemporary art conservation with specialization in time-based media, and addressing social justice, inclusion, and climate change in conservation.

About the Patricia McCarron McGinn Lectureship

The annual Patricia McCarron McGinn Lectureship was inaugurated in 1992 to showcase the scholarship of a faculty member in the Department.  It was established in honor of Patricia McCarron McGinn (1927 – 1991), who was an outstanding student in the UCLA Department of Art History. Her enthusiasm, depth of commitment, and dedication to the challenges of graduate study as a returning student enlivened and expanded the scholarly perspective of the program. To honor her memory, her family, with the generous support of many friends, established the Patricia McCarron McGinn Fund to aid students engaged in the study of art history at UCLA and to sponsor the McGinn Lectureship.

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March 1, 2022
6:00pm

Richard Lesure
Professor, UCLA Department of Anthropology

Inaugural Lecture in the new Author Spotlight series

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Paso de la Amada, on the coast of Chiapas, Mexico, was among the earliest settled villages in Mesoamerica. Excavations at the site have revealed extraordinary earthen constructions, including the earliest known Mesoamerican ballcourt. Professor Lesure will reflect on the 30 years of work that lie behind the book Paso de la Amada: An Early Mesoamerican Ceremonial Center, recently published by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. Work by Lesure and numerous collaborators (including UCLA colleagues and students) has led to surprising insights into the emergence of social inequality and the relation between agriculture and settled village life in early Mesoamerica. 

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Contact Michelle Jacobson
Email mjacobson@ioa.ucla.edu
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February 28, 2022
1:00pm

Jorge Coronado
Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Northwestern University

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Sponsors: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and UCLA Latin American Institute 

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Contact Alba Menéndez Pereda and Elyse Brusher
Email albamenendez@ucla.edu and ebrusher@ucla.edu
Phone
February 18, 2022
11:00am to 12:00pm

Malin Sahlstedt
Conservator, Vasa Museum, Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums

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Since the raising of 17th-century warship Vasa in 1961 after333 years on the seabed of Stockholm harbour, two generations of preservation staff have had the task to safeguard this mighty piece of maritime cultural heritage for the future, a task perhaps as monumental as the ship itself. Contrary to what was thought when the Vasa Museum opened in 1990, namely that the conservation project was finalised and there would be little further need for lab facilities and specialised staff, the gradual development of acidic precipitates on the surface of the ship over the coming decade signalled on-going degradation processes,which called for action and wide expertise. Through a number of interdisciplinary research projects, new knowledge has been built and implemented in museum practice. I will present some of the experiences made and lessons learned over the years, where the securing and maintaining of broad preservation competence have become increasingly important and likewise challening.

Malin Sahlstedt studied Conservation of Cultural Property at Gothenburg University and has aMSc in Archaeological Science from Stockholm University (2000). After working in archaeological conservation with the focus on the treatment of waterlogged wood and a research projecton alum-treated archaeological wood at the Swedish National Heritage Board (2002-2009),she is currently conservator at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, Sweden (2009-present). Here, in the continuous effort to improve the long-term preservation conditions for 17th-centurywarship Vasa and associated wooden artefacts, her work is concentrated on testing methods and implementing research results in the museum context. She also worked as a conservator in the research project Saving Oseberg at the Cultural History Museum in Oslo, Norway (2017-2018), investigating the preservation status of and re-treatment options for the alum-treated wooden objects of the Viking Ship Museum collection.

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Contact Céline Wachsmuth
Email wachsmuthc@g.ucla.edu
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February 17, 2022
5:00pm to 6:00pm
  • Over Zoom

  • Google slides linked 

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February 17, 2022
12:00pm to 2:00pm

Willeke Wendrich, MODERATOR
Director, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology & Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California Los Angeles

Angela McArdle
Senior Historic Preservation Specialist, Department of Veterans Affairs

Albert Gonzalez
Associate Professor of Anthropology & Director of the C.E. Smith Museum of Anthropology, California State University, East Bay

Kristina Douglass
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Penn State University

Stephen Acabado
Associate Professor of Anthropology & Director, UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Sarah Herr
President, Desert Archaeology Inc. 

Julie Stein
Executive Director of the Burke Museum & Professor of Anthropology, University of Washington

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February 17, 2022
8:00am to 9:00am

A book release seminar sponsored by STRI, Panama and the Panamanian ministry of culture.  This new book, written in Spanish, presents recent archaeological research in Panama.  The book is the first tome devoted to Panamanian archaeology published in Spanish in Panama.  

event flyer

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Contact Tom Wake
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February 8, 2022
6:00pm

Dr. Justin Dunnavant, Assistant Professor, UCLA Department of Anthropology
Darartu Mulugeta, Undergraduate, UCLA

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As increasing calls for science communication encourage archaeologists to convey their research to diverse public audiences, we found it necessary to explore how such research was disseminated in the past. Delving into the archives of Ebony Magazine and the Johnson Publishing Company, we examine the manner in which archaeological research was communicated in the Black popular press from the 1950s into the present. The articles, authors, and subjects provide unique insight into the topics of interest to Black America and speak to the power of the Black press at educating and exciting the public about ground-breaking archaeological research. Engaging Ebony Magazine as a historical archive, we uncover little-known figures and moments in the history of African and African diaspora archaeology and offer suggestions for future directions in science communication research.

View the recording here!


Breaking Groun talk graphic


Dr. Justin Dunnavant

Dr. Justin Dunnavant is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. His current research in the US Virgin Islands investigates the relationship between ecology and enslavement in the former Danish West Indies. In addition to his archaeological research, Justin is co-founder of the Society of Black Archaeologists and an AAUS Scientific SCUBA Diver. In 2021, he was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and inducted into The Explorers Club as one of “Fifty People Changing the World that You Need to Know About.” He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. His research has been featured on Netflix's "Explained," Hulu's "Your Attention Please" and in print in American Archaeology and Science Magazine.


Darartu Mulugeta

Darartu Mulugeta is a Political Science and Psychology student at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is specializing in methods and computing with the primary goal of studying African communities and history. She is currently part of the African Diaspora Archaeology Lab as a Bunche Research Fellow. Outside of school, she volunteers at the Oromo Legacy Leadership and Advocacy Association as an Oromo language teaching assistant.

PDF icon Download the flyer here

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Contact Michelle Jacobson
Email mjacobson@ioa.ucla.edu
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