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Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles
Anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were pioneers in using visual anthropological techniques to study the aesthetics of bodily motion in Bali. What is less well known is that they also collected textiles, paintings, puppets, and carvings, most of which are collected at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This book and its accompanying exhibit explore the Mead-Bateson textiles as forms of power. Some textiles in the exhibit are valued for their magical powers derived from techniques of fabrication and contexts of use; other cloths are important for the stories that surround them as records of a period in Balinese history. An added layer of meaning is introduced as these fabrics are curated and exhibited in Western countries. This book reveals how the “power” of Balinese textiles depends upon the efficacies attributed to these objects as they journey from fabrication and ritual use in their native context to curation and display in the West.
 
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Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles
Anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were pioneers in using visual anthropological techniques to study the aesthetics of bodily motion in Bali. What is less well known is that they also collected textiles, paintings, puppets, and carvings, most of which are collected at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This book and its accompanying exhibit explore the Mead-Bateson textiles as forms of power. Some textiles in the exhibit are valued for their magical powers derived from techniques of fabrication and contexts of use; other cloths are important for the stories that surround them as records of a period in Balinese history. An added layer of meaning is introduced as these fabrics are curated and exhibited in Western countries. This book reveals how the “power” of Balinese textiles depends upon the efficacies attributed to these objects as they journey from fabrication and ritual use in their native context to curation and display in the West.
 
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Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles

Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles

by Urmila Mohan
Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles

Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles

by Urmila Mohan

Overview

Anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were pioneers in using visual anthropological techniques to study the aesthetics of bodily motion in Bali. What is less well known is that they also collected textiles, paintings, puppets, and carvings, most of which are collected at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This book and its accompanying exhibit explore the Mead-Bateson textiles as forms of power. Some textiles in the exhibit are valued for their magical powers derived from techniques of fabrication and contexts of use; other cloths are important for the stories that surround them as records of a period in Balinese history. An added layer of meaning is introduced as these fabrics are curated and exhibited in Western countries. This book reveals how the “power” of Balinese textiles depends upon the efficacies attributed to these objects as they journey from fabrication and ritual use in their native context to curation and display in the West.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781941792131
Publisher: Bard Graduate Center
Publication date: 04/15/2018
Pages: 220
Product dimensions: 7.00(w) x 8.75(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Urmila Mohan is the Bard Graduate Center/American Museum of Natural History Postdoctoral Fellow in Museum Anthropology. She is the founder and editor of the Material Religions blog.
 

Table of Contents

Director's Foreword ix

Foreword xii

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction Backdrops and Foregrounds 1

Chapter 1 Cloth and Balinese Culture 8

Chapter 2 The Mead-Bateson Collection in the AMNH 27

Textiles in Mead's Ethnographic Notes

The Study of "Balinese Character"

Chapter 3 Cloth in Balinese Rites of Passage 53

Cepuk as Ritual Cloth

Three-Month Ceremony

Puberty and Toothfiling

Wedding

Cremation

Chapter 4 Bali in the Twentieth Century 81

Chapter 5 Balinese Exhibits in Western Museums 91

Dutch Colonial Collections

Museums in the United States

Portraits of Race at the Field Museum

MoMA: A Background to War

The AMNH Indonesia Alcove

Conclusion 119

Object List 122

Glossary 130

Bibliography 137

Index 146

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