Gifts from the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories of the Bering Strait

FAIN: MI-50022-06

Princeton University (Princeton, NJ 08540-5228)
Susan M. Taylor (Project Director: February 2006 to September 2008)
Rebecca E. Sender (Project Director: September 2008 to December 2010)

Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a publication, a website, and programs on the art of the Bering Strait region since about A.D. 1000, the insights it provides into the cultures in that area over time, and its ongoing influence on contemporary artists.

Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) requests a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the amount of $350,000 to support the implementation of the exhibition "Gifts from the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories of the Bering Strait" and its related components, which include publications, a public conference, a Website, and other educational programs. The exhibition brings together approximately 150 of the finest examples of rare, ancient ivories masterfully carved from walrus tusk, created by peoples living on both sides of the Bering Strait during the first millennium A.D. The project addresses and inteprets the following themes: the fluorescence of art and cultures in the challenging environment of the ancient Bering Strait; the relationship among humans, animals, and the spirit world as revealed by the aesthetics and ideology of this art, and the social history of objects-how the uses and interpretations of these carvings have changed from ancient times to today.