School for Advanced Research

Advanced, short, and research team seminars at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) promote communication among scholars and practitioners who are at a critical stage of research on a shared topic. Each seminar consists of up to 10 scholars — including one or two who serve as chair/s — who meet at SAR's Santa Fe campus for two to five days of intense discussion. SAR's renowned Advanced Seminar program convenes a group of scholars for a five-day seminar, the proceedings of which are considered for publication by SAR Press. Advanced Seminars are selected each year through a highly competitive application process.

SAR annually awards the J. I. Staley Prize, considered to be the “Pulitzer Prize of anthropology,” to a living author for a book that exemplifies outstanding scholarship and writing in anthropology. The award recognizes innovative works that go beyond traditional frontiers and dominant schools of thought in anthropology and add new dimensions to our understanding of the human species. The prize carries a cash award of $7,500.

The Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) houses one of the world’s most significant collections of Southwest Native American arts from pre-contact through the 450-year period of Spanish contact, to the present and numbering some 13,000 items. The collections and associated programs have made the IARC an outstanding cultural and educational resource for Native American communities, researchers, scholars, and the public.

The goal of IARC is to bridge the divide between creativity and scholarship by supporting initiatives and projects in Native studies, art history, and creative expression that illuminate the intersections of the social sciences, humanities, and arts. This is accomplished by providing fellowship opportunities for artists to engage in uninterrupted creativity; fostering dialogue among artists, researchers, scholars, and community members through seminars and symposia; nurturing future arts and museums professionals through experiential training; and promoting study of the IARC collection of Native arts.

In addition, up to three fellowships are awarded to advance the work of mature and emerging Native artists. Each fellowship includes a monthly stipend, housing, studio space, a supplies allowance, and travel reimbursement to and from SAR. These fellowships provide time for artists to explore new avenues of creativity, grapple with new ideas to further advance their work, and strengthen existing talents. SAR offers three artist-in-residence fellowships annually to advance the work of mature and emerging Native artists

The IARC also offers two nine-month internships to individuals who are recent college graduates, current graduate students, or junior museum professionals interested in furthering their professional museum experience and enhancing their intellectual capacity for contributing to the expanding field and discourse of museum studies. These internships, supported since 1997, provide stipends, travel, and housing and are funded through a national charitable trust and private donations.

SAR offers three artist-in-residence fellowships annually to advance the work of mature and emerging Native artists. Each fellowship includes a monthly stipend, housing, studio space, a supplies allowance, and travel reimbursement to and from campus. These fellowships provide time for artists to explore new avenues of creativity, grapple with new ideas to further advance their work, and strengthen existing talents.
The fellowships support diverse creative disciplines and can include sculpture, performance, basketry, painting, printmaking, digital art, mixed media, photography, pottery, writing, and film and video.

For over a century, SAR Press has published intelligent books on questions that matter. From scholarly works arising from SAR?s Advanced Seminar, Resident Scholar, and Native Artist programs to books of popular interest on the life and arts of peoples of the American Southwest, past and present, the exceptional quality and importance of SAR Press publications are widely recognized.

SAR Press also explores new digital formats for teaching public audiences on topics of anthropological importance. An example of such recent outreach efforts is Southwest Crossroads: Cultures and Histories of the American Southwest, a dynamic, interactive, on-line learning matrix of original texts, poems, fiction, maps, paintings, photographs, oral histories, and films. This engaging resource allows teachers and students in grades 7?12 to explore the many contentious stories that diverse peoples have used to make sense of themselves and the region.

SAR members enjoy a wide variety of benefits and opportunities, depending on the level of membership. Members have research and borrowing privileges at the Catherine McElvain Library; may take part in local, regional, and international field trips; have free access to special lecture series and campus tours; and 20% off the price of merchandise and SAR Press publications.

SAR launched a new initiative in 2017, the Creative Thought Forum (CTF), which brings to Santa Fe exciting and inventive thinkers whose work illuminates topics of broad public concern—ranging from climate change and growing social inequality to the unanticipated risks posed by new technologies. Other speakers may be working on projects of no immediate utility but which instead challenge our imagination and expand our sense of the possible. Some of these visiting experts will be anthropologists, but disciplinary identity is of less concern to SAR than is a demonstrated ability to communicate fresh ideas effectively. This initiative will complement but not replace SAR’s longstanding commitment to programming focused on the history and diverse cultures of the Southwest.

Many of these talented visitors will give public talks to SAR members and members of the general public. In addition to presenting a lecture, however, they will also lead a discussion with SAR members in a salon-style setting. These conversations will be held in SAR’s Dobkin Boardroom on the morning after the lecture and will be limited to twenty-five members who are at the Chaco level or above. CTF lectures are recorded and posted on SAR's YouTube site.

As part of the CTF, SAR will present an annual President’s Lecture featuring an especially prominent speaker.

The 2018-2019 Creative Thought Forum explores the theme of tradition and innovation. Now in its second year, the programming continues to enhance SAR’s mission of promoting creativity in the humanistic social sciences and Native American art. SAR is excited by the possibility of engaging our members and Santa Feans in general with the work of emerging thought-leaders.

Over the 109 years of the School's existence, its offices have relocated from the Palace of the Governors to the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe and, after 1959, to the Hewett House on Lincoln Avenue. In 1972 the School found a permanent home on Santa Fe's historic east side. Construction of the seven acre estate began in 1927 and was the home of Martha and Elizabeth White, wealthy New York business women who relocated to Santa Fe. The White sisters were avid patrons of Indian art, and together opened the first Native American art gallery in New York City. Elizabeth was a founding member of the Indian Arts Fund (IAF) in Santa Fe and sat on SAR’s Board of Managers for twenty-five years. When Elizabeth died in 1972, she generously left the estate, named El Delirio, along with other Santa Fe properties, to the School of American Research. In that same year, the IAF disbanded and deeded its collections of Southwest Indian art to SAR. The construction of the Indian Arts Research Center in 1978 gave the collections inherited from the IAF an appropriate home. Our library holds a priceless archival collection of photographs of the construction of the estate as well the elegant gatherings hosted by the White sisters and attended by well-known artists and writers who built Santa Fe's art community. The stewardship of this collection, the historic buildings, and extensively landscaped grounds continue to be a primary concerns and goals for SAR.