Art, Observation, and an Anthropology of Illustration

Max Carocci is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Richmond, the American University in London, UK. He is an anthropologist, and has been researching and curating Native North American arts at the intersection of art and anthropology since his first book Warriors of the Plains (2012). He has curated exhibitions for the British Museum, the Royal Anthropological Institute (London), the Weltkulturen Museum (Frankfurt), and the Venice Biennale, among others. In 2023 he curated a virtual exhibition for the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland entitled ‘Imaging the Field: Sketches and Drawings from the RAI Archives’ which anticipates a conference on Ethnographic representations called ‘Fieldwork Sketches: Blurring the Lines between Art and Anthropology’ scheduled for 2024. Max’s latest publication on the subject is ‘Representations of Baja California Indians as Ethnographic Art’ (Colonial Latin American Review, 2023).

Stephanie Pratt is former Associate Professor (Reader) of Art History at Plymouth University, UK, and currently an independent scholar and curator. Dr Pratt was the first Cultural Ambassador for her Tribal Council at the Crow Creek Dakota Indian Reservation in South Dakota, USA where she is an enrolled member. She currently works as an Indigenous Academic Fellow for the National Trust UK. She is a member of the Grandmothers’ Society (Kunsi/Unci Society) founded at Fort Thompson, South Dakota in 2014 which promotes the understanding and preservation of Dakota and Lakota culture and language. Pratt’s monograph, American Indians in British Art, 1700-1840 (2005) was the first study of its kind and she explores many of its central themes in her other scholarly publications over the last 30 years.