Short biography:
Howard Morphy (BSc, MPhil London, PhD ANU, FASSA, FAAH, CIHA) is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Research School of Humanities at the Australian National University. Prior to returning to the Australian National University in 1997, he held the chair in Anthropology at University College London. Before that he spent ten years as a curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. He is an anthropologist of art and visual anthropologist having co- edited two of the main source books in the respective fields The Anthropology of Art: a Reader (2006, Blackwell's, with Morgan Perkins) and Rethinking Visual Anthropology (1997, Yale University Press, with Marcus Banks). He has written extensively on Australian Aboriginal art with a monograph of Yolngu Art, Ancestral Connections (Chicago 1991), a general survey Aboriginal Art (Phaidon, 1998) and most recently Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-Cultural Categories (Berg, 2007). He has also produced a pioneering multimedia biography The Art of Narritjin Maymuru with Pip Deveson and Katie Hayne (ANU epress 2005). He has conducted extensive fieldwork with the Yolngu people of Northern Australia, and collaborated on many films with Ian Dunlop of Film Australia and has curated many exhibitions including Yingapungapu at the National Museum of Australia.
With Frances Morphy he helped prepare the Blue Mud Bay Native Title Claim which as a result of the 2008 High Court judgement recognised Indigenous ownership of the waters over the intertidal zone under the Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act. His involvement in e-research and in the development of museum exhibitions reflects his determination to make humanities research as accessible as possible to wider publics and to close the distance between the research process and research outcomes. In 2008 he was one of the organising committee of the major CIHA conference in Melbourne Crossing Cultures: conflict, migration, convergence. |
Selected Publications:
Books and Monographs
2008 Becoming art: exploring cross-cultural categories, UNSW Press, Sydney.
2007 Becoming art: exploring cross-cultural categories, Berg Publishers: Oxford.
Edited volumes
2009 with Michelle Hetherington, Discovering Cook's Collections. Canberra: National Museum of Australia.
2006 with Morgan Perkins, A Reader in the Anthropology of Art. Oxford: Blackwells.
2005 with M. Charlesworth and F. Dussart (eds), Australian Aboriginal Religions, Ashgate, Aldershot.
Chapters in books
2008 ‘Joyous maggots': The symbolism of Yolngu mortuary rituals. In Melinda Hinkson and Jeremy Beckett (eds) Appreciation of Difference: WEH Stanner and Aboriginal Australia, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press 137-51.
2008 Morphy, F. and Morphy, H. ‘Afterword: demography and destiny', in K. Glaskin, M. Tonkinson, Y. Musharbash and V. Burbank (eds), Mortality, Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia, Ashgate, Aldershot. 209-214.
2008 The Laverty Collection: Exploring the qualities of Aboriginal art' In (eds) Colin and Liz Laverty Beyond Sacred: Recent painting form Australia's remote Aboriginal communities Prahran: Hardie Grant Books. 8-17.
2007 ‘Anthropological theory and the multiple determinacy of the present' In David Parkin and Stanley Ulijaszek (eds.) Holisitc Anthropology: Emergence and Convergence. Oxford: Berghahn
2007 ‘Expressing Identity: Creativity in Yolngu Art' In Lynne Seear and Julie Ewington Brought to Light II: Contemporary Australian Art 1966-2006 from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection. Brisbane: Queensland Art Publishing.
2007 ‘The aesthetics of Eastern Arnhem Land art' Hetti Perkins and Margie West (eds.) One Sun, One Moon Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales.
2007 with Mary Eagle, ‘Three Creative Fellows' In Mary Eagle (ed.) Three Creative Fellows: Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Narritjin Maymuru, Canberra: The Drill Hall Gallery, ANU.
2006 'Sites of Persuasion: Yingapungapu at the National Museum of Australia'. In Ivan Karp (ed.), Museum frictions: public cultures/global transformations, Duke University Press: Durham, 469-99.
2006 'The Anthropology of Art: A Reflection on its History and Contemporary Practice', in H. Morphy, M. Perkins (eds.), The Anthropology of Art: A Reader, Blackwell Publishing: Malden, USA, 1-32.
2005 'Indigenous Art as Economy', in D. Austin-Broos and G. Macdonald (eds), Culture, Economy and Governance in Aboriginal Australia, Sydney University Press, Sydney: 19-28.
2005 'Seeing Indigenous Australian art', in M. Westermann (ed), Anthropologies of Art, Yale University Press, New Haven: 124-142.
2005 'Spencer and Gillen’s Photography and the Evaluation of Anthropological Method', in P. Batty, L. Allen, J. Morton (eds), The Photographs of Baldwin Spencer, Miegunyah Press at Melbourne University Press, Melbourne: 74-77.
2003 'Some Concluding Anthropological Reflections', In Marcel Mauss On Prayer Oxford: Berghahn pp. 139-154
Journal articles
2008 ‘Art as a mode of Action: some problems with Gell's Art and Agency' Journal of Material Culture Vol 14 (1): 5-27.
2008 'Re-reading Ron Berndt: exploring the depths of his Yolngu ethnography' Anthropological Forum Vol 19(1): 73-97
2006 'The Practice of an Expert: Anthropology in Native Title', Anthropological Forum, 16 (2): 135-51.
2006 'The Aesthetics of Communication and the Communication of Cultural Aesthetics: A Perspective on Ian Dunlop's Films of Aboriginal Australia' Visual Anthropology Review 21 (1 and 2): 63-79.
2006 Tasting the waters: Discriminating identities in the waters of Blue Mud Bay', Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 11, Issue 1/2, 67-85.
2005 'Style and meaning: Abelam art through Yolngu eyes',RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 47:209-230.
2005 'Yolngu art and the creativity of the inside', In M. Charlesworth, F. Dussart and H. Morphy (eds), Australian Aboriginal Religions, Ashgate, Aldershot: 159–170.
2005 with Luker, Hempenstall, Kuklick, Digim’rina and Young, 'Malinowski: odyssey of an anthropologist', The Journal of Pacific History, XL(2): 237-254.
Digital Media
2006 with Trevor Graham and Pip Deveson, Ceremony - The Djungguwan of Northeast Arnhem Land. Sydney: Film Australia in association with Denise Haslem Productions.
2005 with P. Deveson and K. Hayne, The Art of Narritjin Maymuru (CD-Rom), ANU E-Press in association with Buku Larrngay Mulka and Film Australia.
2005 with, U. Frederick, K. Hayne, C. Vuckovic and K. Westmacott, abstractions website, http:// www.anu.edu.au/culture/abstractions.
Catalogue essays
2006 'Impossible to ignore: Imants Tillers' response to Aboriginal art'. In D. Clark (ed.), Imants Tillers: one world many visions, National Gallery of Australia: Canberra, 85-94.
2005 'The diversity of tradition', in T. Kenyon (ed.), Luminous: Contemporary Art from the Australian Desert (catalogue), Manly Art Gallery and Museum Exhibition.
2004 'Galuma Maymuru', 'Narritjin Maymuru', 'Mithinari Gurawiwi', 'Maw Mununggurr', in Hetti Perkins (ed.), Tradition Today: Indigenous Art in Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney: 84–85, 86–87, 54–55, 96–97.
2004 'O przedstawianiu przodkow', in Monika Bakke (ed.), Estetyka Aborygenow, Universitas Aiictorium Editoriimoue societas, Krakow: 21-32.
2004 'Ogladajac sztuke aborygenska w galerii', in Monika Bakke (ed.), Estetyka Aborygenow, Universitas Aiictorium Editoriimoue societas, Krakow: 151-164.
2004 'The Diversity of Tradition', in T. Kenyon (ed.), Luminous: Contemporary Art from the Australian Desert, Beaver Press, Sydney: 4-6.
2004 'Yingapungapu - rzezba ziemna jako malowidto na korz', in Monika Bakke (ed.), Estetyka Aborygenow, Universitas Aiictorium Editoriimoue societas, Krakow: 141-146.
2002 'Encountering Aborigines' in Sarah Thomas (ed.) The Encounter, 1802 : art of the Flinders and Baudin voyages Adelaide : Art Gallery of South Australia pp 148-163
Other
2002 Dundiwuy Wanambi, in Anna Gray (ed.) Australian Art in the National Gallery of Australia p 398
2002 Narritjin Maymuru, in Anna Gray (ed.) Australian Art in the National Gallery of Australia p 319
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