Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles, this symposium expands upon themes of religion, power, and cultural resilience to include textiles from various parts of the Indonesian archipelago. Speakers include anthropologists, textile historians, and curators each of whom will offer reflections on the agency of Indonesian textiles ranging from their spiritual or ritual uses in their culture of origin to their re-contextualization in Western ethnographic and art museums.

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Peter N. Miller
Dean and Professor, Bard Graduate Center
Ivan Gaskell
Professor, Curator and Head of the Focus Project, Bard Graduate Center
Welcome

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Urmila Mohan
Bard Graduate Center / American Museum of Natural History Postdoctoral Fellow in Museum Anthropology
Introduction

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Adrian Vickers
Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Sydney
Balinese-Western Interactions in a Colonial Context: The 1930s Context of the Mead-Bateson Collection

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Meghan Bill
Curatorial Assistant, Arts of Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and the Islamic World, Brooklyn Museum
A History of Indonesian Textiles at the Brooklyn Museum

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Ruth Barnes
Thomas Jaffe Curator of Indo-Pacific Art, Yale University Art Gallery
“Without cloth we cannot marry”: The Making and Meaning of Textiles in Eastern Indonesia

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Susan Rodgers
Professor Emerita, Anthropology, College of the Holy Cross
Headhunting Cloths? Power and Interpretation in Iban and Dayak Textiles on the Move

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Urmila Mohan
Bard Graduate Center / American Museum of Natural History Postdoctoral Fellow in Museum Anthropology
Reflections on Curating Balinese Textiles

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Panel Discussion and Q&A
Moderated by Ivan Gaskell, Professor, Curator and Head of the Focus Project, Bard Graduate Center