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.

Table of Contents
Director’s Foreword

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Backdrops and Foregrounds

Chapter 1: Cloth and Balinese Culture

Chapter 2: The Mead-Bateson Collection in the AMNH
Textiles in Mead’s Ethnographic Notes
The Study of “Balinese Character”

Chapter 3: Cloth in Balinese Rites of Passage
Cepuk as Ritual Cloth
Three-Month Ceremony
Puberty and Toothfiling
Wedding
Cremation

Chapter 4: Bali in the Twentieth Century

Chapter 5: Balinese Exhibits in Western Museums
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

Objects List

Glossary

Bibliography

Index