Sally Price, born Sally Hamlin (16 September 1943) in Boston, is an American
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
, best known for her studies of so-called "primitive art" and its place in the ''
imaginaire'' of
Western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
viewers.
Career
Price attended
Walnut Hills High School
, streetaddress = 3250 Victory Parkway
, city = Cincinnati
, state = Ohio
, zipcode = 45207
, country = United States
, coordinates =
, type ...
in
Cincinnati
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...
and then
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...
, where she majored in
French Literature
French literature () generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than Fr ...
, graduating in 1965 after spending her junior year at the
Sorbonne
Sorbonne may refer to:
* Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities.
*the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970)
*one of its components or linked institution, ...
in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. In 1963 she married anthropology graduate student
Richard Price
Richard Price (23 February 1723 – 19 April 1791) was a British moral philosopher, Nonconformist minister and mathematician. He was also a political reformer, pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the French ...
and together they began conducting
fieldwork
Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct fie ...
during summers – in a fishing village in
Martinique
Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago: or ) is an island and an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of the French Republic, Martinique is located in th ...
(1963), in a
village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...
in rural
Andalusia
Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a ...
,
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
(1964), and among Zinacanteco Indians in
Chiapas
Chiapas (; Tzotzil language, Tzotzil and Tzeltal language, Tzeltal: ''Chyapas'' ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas), is one of the states that make up the Political divisions of Mexico, ...
,
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
(1965 and 1966) as part of a large Harvard-led project in the area. After a brief trip to
Suriname
Suriname (; srn, Sranankondre or ), officially the Republic of Suriname ( nl, Republiek Suriname , srn, Ripolik fu Sranan), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north ...
to explore the possibility of conducting long-term field research among the
Saramaka
The Saramaka, Saamaka or Saramacca are one of six Maroon peoples (formerly called "Bush Negroes") in the Republic of Suriname and one of the Maroon peoples in French Guiana. In 2007, the Saramaka won a ruling by the Inter-American Court of Hum ...
Maroons
Maroons are descendants of African diaspora in the Americas, Africans in the Americas who escaped from slavery and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous peoples, eventually ethnogenesi ...
of the interior, the Prices returned for a two-year residence in the village of Dangogo, on the upper
Suriname River
The Suriname River (Dutch: ''Surinamerivier'') is 480 km long and flows through the country Suriname. Its sources are located in the Guiana Highlands on the border between the Wilhelmina Mountains and the Eilerts de Haan Mountains (where it i ...
. This experience formed the foundation of much of their subsequent contribution to the discipline of anthropology and the field of
African American studies.
Returning from Suriname, the Prices spent a year in the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
, working with
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
scholars of Maroon societies such as anthropologist
A. J. F. Köbben. It was only later that Sally Price attended
graduate school
Postgraduate or graduate education refers to Academic degree, academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by higher education, post-secondary students who have earned an Undergraduate education, un ...
, receiving her
Ph.D
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...
in
Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...
from
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
in 1982. Two subsequent years of research in the Netherlands expanded relations with Dutch colleagues, and in 2000 Price was elected foreign member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...
.
After a dozen years at Johns Hopkins, followed by two years in Paris for a combination of teaching and
research
Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...
, the Prices returned to the fishing village in Martinique where they had begun their careers, establishing it as a base for a series of visiting appointments (at, for example, the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
,
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
,
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
, and the
Universidade Federal da Bahia
The Federal University of Bahia ( pt, Universidade Federal da Bahia, UFBA) is a public university located mainly in the city of Salvador. It is the largest university in the state of Bahia and one of Brazil's most prestigious educational institu ...
in
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
). In 1994, Sally Price took on a one-semester-a-year post as Duane A. and Virginia S. Dittman Professor of Anthropology and
American Studies
American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinary field of scholarship that examines American literature, history, society, and culture. It traditionally incorporates literary criticism, historiography and critical theory.
Sch ...
at the
College of William and Mary
The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III a ...
, alternating her time between the College and her base in Martinique.
In 2014 she was decorated by France's Ministry of Culture as "
Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres
The ''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' (Order of Arts and Letters) is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is ...
" for her "contribution déterminante au rayonnement de la recherche anthropologique et au développement de la réflexion sur les musées de société."
Contributions
Price's early work, which focused on the Maroons of Suriname, included ''Co-Wives and Calabashes'', "an analysis of the ways that cultural ideas about the genders influence Saramaka women's art and artistic activity and the complementary contributions that these artistic activities make to their social life," which won the
University of Michigan’s Alice and Edith Hamilton Prize in
Women’s Studies
Women's studies is an academic field that draws on Feminism, feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining Social constructionism, social and cultural constructs of gender; ...
. Later, inspired by her experiences as a guest
curator
A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...
of Maroon
art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
for a
UCLA-based traveling exhibition
A travelling exhibition, also referred to as a "travelling exhibit" or a "touring exhibition", is a type of exhibition that is presented at more than one venue.
Temporary exhibitions can bring together objects that might be dispersed among sever ...
, she began exploring Western constructions of non-Western art. Her ''Primitive Art in Civilized Places'' (published in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
,
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
,
French,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
,
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
,
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
, and
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
) has sparked much debate, "rattling glass cases throughout the art world", as one critic put it. In her role as a
Caribbeanist
A Caribbeanist is a scholar who specializes in the study of the Caribbean region of the Americas -- its literature, culture, politics, society, ecology and so forth. In some academic disciplines Caribbean studies are seen as a branch of the large ...
, she co-edited (with
Sidney W. Mintz) ''Caribbean Contours'' (dubbed “the best single book available today for courses on Caribbean
society
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...
and politics”) and together with
Richard Price
Richard Price (23 February 1723 – 19 April 1791) was a British moral philosopher, Nonconformist minister and mathematician. He was also a political reformer, pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the French ...
, she has written books on a variety of subjects, from artist
Romare Bearden’s life in the Caribbean to Maroon arts,
folktale
A folktale or folk tale is a folklore genre that typically consists of a story passed down from generation to generation orally.
Folktale may also refer to:
Categories of stories
* Folkloric tale from oral tradition
* Fable (written form of the a ...
tradition
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
s,
public folklore
Public folklore is the term for the work done by folklorists in public settings in the United States and Canada outside of universities and colleges, such as arts councils, museums, folklife festivals, radio stations, etc., as opposed to academic ...
, the
history of anthropology
History of anthropology in this article refers primarily to the 18th- and 19th-century precursors of modern anthropology. The term anthropology itself, innovated as a New Latin scientific word during the Renaissance, has always meant "the study ...
,
art forgery
Art forgery is the creating and selling of works of art which are falsely credited to other, usually more famous artists. Art forgery can be extremely lucrative, but modern dating and analysis techniques have made the identification of forged art ...
, and
artifact collecting (this last illustrated by Sally Price with 50 pen-and-ink sketches). Her recent work has been based in two distant parts of
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
--
French Guiana
French Guiana ( or ; french: link=no, Guyane ; gcr, label=French Guianese Creole, Lagwiyann ) is an overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic ...
, where she continues her
ethnographic studies of Maroon culture, and Paris, where she has written on the
politics
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
, both personal and national, involved in the creation of Paris’s new
museum
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...
of
African
African or Africans may refer to:
* Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa:
** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa
*** Ethn ...
,
Asian
Asian may refer to:
* Items from or related to the continent of Asia:
** Asian people, people in or descending from Asia
** Asian culture, the culture of the people from Asia
** Asian cuisine, food based on the style of food of the people from Asi ...
,
Oceanic
Oceanic may refer to:
*Of or relating to the ocean
*Of or relating to Oceania
**Oceanic climate
**Oceanic languages
**Oceanic person or people, also called "Pacific Islander(s)"
Places
* Oceanic, British Columbia, a settlement on Smith Island, ...
, and
Pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...
art.
[Sally Price, ''Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. See also "The Enduring Power of Primitivism" in Gitti Salami & Monica Blackmun Visonà (eds), 'A Companion to Modern African Art' (West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), pp. 447, 465.]
Books
* 1980: ''Afro-American Arts of the Suriname Rain Forest'' (with Richard Price)
* 1984: ''Co-Wives and Calabashes''
* 1985: ''Caribbean Contours'' (edited with Sidney W. Mintz)
* 1988: ''John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam'' (edited with Richard Price)
* 1989: ''Primitive Art in Civilized Places''
* 1991: ''Two Evenings in Saramaka'' (with Richard Price)
* 1992: ''C’est-à-dire'' (with Jean Jamin)
* 1992: ''Equatoria'' (with Richard Price)
* 1992: ''Stedman's Surinam: Life in an Eighteenth-Century Slave Society'' (with Richard Price)
* 1994: ''On The Mall'' (with Richard Price)
* 1995: ''Enigma Variations: A Novel'' (with Richard Price)
* 1999: ''Maroon Arts: Cultural Vitality in the African Diaspora'' (with Richard Price)
* 2003: ''Les Marrons'' (with Richard Price)
* 2003: ''The Root of Roots: Or, How Afro-American Anthropology Got Its Start'' (with Richard Price)
* 2006: ''Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension'' (with Richard Price)
* 2007: ''Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly''
References
* Frank Bovenkerk, Frank Buis, & Henk Tromp (eds.), ''Wetenschap en Partijdigheid: Opstellen voor André J.F. Köbben''. Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1990.
* Victoria R. Bricker & Gary H. Gossen (eds), ''Ethnographic Encounters in Southern Mesoamerica: Essays in Honor of Evon Zartman Vogt, Jr''. Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, SUNY, 1989.
* Ellen Gruenbaum, "Gender, Power, and Traditional Arts". ''Reviews in Anthropology'' 14(1), 1987, pp. 37–45.
* Jorge Heine, ''The San Juan Star'', 18 December 1986.
* Carolyn J. Mooney, "Notes from Academe: On Martinique, 2 Scholars Explore the Permeability of Cultural Boundaries". ''The Chronicle of Higher Education'', 7 April 2000, p. B2.
* Jennifer Schuessler, "Inside Publishing". ''Lingua Franca'', September/October 1995, p. 26.
* Evon Z. Vogt, ''Bibliography of the Harvard Chiapas Project: The First Twenty Years, 1957–1977''. Cambridge MA, Peabody Museum Press, 1987.
Notes
External links
Richard Price & Sally Price website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Price, Sally
1943 births
Living people
American anthropologists
Harvard University alumni
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
University of Paris alumni
People from Boston