CLTL Scholar-in-Residence

Pop-up installation | April 21-28
Tang Teaching Museum | Payne Room
7000 Fragments: Maya Murals from San Bartolo, Guatemala

In 2001, ancient Maya murals were discovered at a previously unknown site in a remote tropical jungle of Guatemala. The San Bartolo murals (c. 100 BCE) are among the most important Maya artifacts ever found. The beauty and age of the ancient painting that emerged from beneath meters of rock and construction fill surprised scholars and re-wrote what we know of Maya kings, artists, and scribes. The murals visually narrate the creation of the world, depicting a painted landscape of zoomorphic serpents and anthropomorphic caves. However, the in situ murals buried within the pyramid are only part of the story: the site once contained many more paintings, but these artworks were intentionally broken into fragments and concealed by the Maya. At the culmination of fifteen years of fieldwork, laboratory analysis and art conservation, 7000 Fragments presents a life-size model of the mural chamber and new findings from the reassembled fragments.

Events include a lecture by Dr. Lucha Martinez de Luna, Heritage and Place: Chicano Murals of Colorado, Tuesday, April 24, 7:30 p.m. Martinez de Luna (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico) surveys the legacy of 1960’s public art through which “Chicano youth used symbols to describe their dynamic cultural heritage while recognizing social inequality and injustice.” 7000 Fragments will host archaeologists for a Maya Mural Seminar, Thursday, April 26, 5-8 p.m. This event provides an extraordinary opportunity to experience the rich and complex imagery of the paintings and panelists will present new findings about the San Bartolo mural narrative.

Panelists for the “Maya Mural Seminar” include: Heather Hurst, Skidmore College; Edwin Román Ramirez, Pacunam, Guatemala; William Saturno, San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project; David Stuart, University of Texas at Austin; Karl Taube, University of California, Riverside.

7000 Fragments: Maya Murals from San Bartolo, Guatemala is organized by Associate Professor of Anthropology and Skidmore Scholar in Residence Heather Hurst, and is supported by The Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning, The Office of Special Programs, and the Tang.

 

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Spring 2018 Scholar-in-Residence: Heather Hurst
Faculty Residency - Special Programs

Heather Hurst, associate professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology, is the first Skidmore Scholar in Residence, supported by the OSP, CLTL, and the DOF/VPAA’s office for spring 2018.

Hurst has spent the last fifteen years working at the site of San Bartolo, Guatemala, investigating and illustrating the fragile wall paintings that are one of the single most important ancient Maya artifacts ever discovered. Her residency, entitled "Maya Murals of San Bartolo," will utilize print, visual, digital, and archival materials to engage our community in discussions about cultural heritage preservation, artists and political authority, origin mythology, bodies, and artistic expression.

A series of events will bring various scholars and artists to campus throughout the semester as she illustrates a new corpus of the epic creation story ancient artists expertly rendered two thousand years ago. This work will culminate in an exhibition at the Tang Teaching Museum, April 17–28, featuring a life-size reconstruction of the mural chamber. The result of Hurst’s faculty residency will be an exhibition opening in June 2018 with a bilingual museum catalog and teaching materials at the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Guatemala City, which will be the permanent home of the San Bartolo mural corpus.

Hurst’s interdisciplinary work facilitates dialogue between archaeologists, materials scientists, conservators, and art historians, and at the same time disseminates images that engage both academics and the public in the study of Maya culture. Her work has been published in National Geographic, Science, Antiquity, and the New York Times, and exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Hurst was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004 and is currently a Guggenheim Fellow.

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Call for Proposals
Co-Sponsored Skidmore Faculty Residency
from the Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning and
the Office of Special Programs

About the CLTL/OSP Sponsored Faculty Residency

The Office of the Dean of the Faculty, the Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning, and the Office of Special Programs have formalized a partnership to support a semesterlong Skidmore faculty residency for spring of 2019. This residency connects Special Programs’ guest artist/scholar residency model with the Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning’s faculty development programming. This innovative residency affords Skidmore faculty members the opportunity to propose residency programming that best relates to their research and/or creative projects with the aim to explore new possibilities for connectivity and collaboration with students, faculty, and the larger community. The DOF, CLTL, and OSP expect this to be a full-semester, full-time residency, which integrates, among other programming, a guest presenter whose expertise intersects with the Skidmore faculty’s topic and goals for the semester residency.

Eligibility

All full-time Skidmore College faculty are eligible to apply.

Objectives and Expectations

• To offer one Skidmore faculty member the opportunity to share his/her/their research and/or creative and artistic project with students, faculty, and the community. The semester’s activities might take the form of public talks, performances, or exhibits. The faculty resident might also facilitate student panels or organize a conference on campus.
• To bring a presenter to campus during the residency who will engage with the Skidmore community through a series of public events. The presenter might attend classes and offer a public lecture, exhibit, or performance.

Proposal Guidelines

Proposals should be no more than three single-spaced pages and should be submitted as a PDF file to Grace Burton (gburton@skidmore.edu) and Michelle Paquette-Deuel (mpaquett@skidmore.edu). Your proposal should include the following:

• Your name, department, and email address
• Title of your residency project
• A description of the scholarship and/or your artistic project you wish to explore during the residency
• A discussion of how you will engage with the community during the residency semester (seminars, faculty-to-faculty talks, conferences, exhibits, performances, etc.)
• Names and short descriptions of potential external presenters and their activities while they are on campus
• In addition to your proposal, a letter of support from your department chair or program director. (Because backfill for one-semester course releases is not automatic, department chairs or program directors should give a brief explanation of how the course releases will affect department or program offerings.)

Course Releases and Funding

OSP and the CLTL have received approval from the DOF/VPAA’s office to support two course releases for the Skidmore Faculty Residency semester. OSP and the CLTL will fund the external presenter’s honorarium, travel, and accommodation expenses up to $12,000 while they are on campus.

Timeline for Proposal Submission and Selection

The deadline for submission of proposals for the spring 2019 residency is March 30, 2018. Proposals will be selected based on their relevance to the residency objectives. An advisory committee composed of faculty and administrators will review all proposals and make the final funding decision. All faculty who submit proposals will be notified of the committee’s determination by April 27, 2018. The selected faculty resident should work directly with their department chair to schedule course releases for the residency semester.

Administrative Support from OSP and the CLTL

The CLTL and OSP will work in close coordination with the faculty resident to provide administrative support for the external presenter’s visit, including contract negotiation, scheduling, travel, accommodations, and catering.

Residency Summary

At the end of the semester, the Skidmore faculty resident will be expected to write a short (three to five pages) reflection of their residency, highlighting progress made and tangible outcomes (e.g. papers, presentations, exhibits, performances).