Sally Price

Sally Price, born Sally Hamlin(16 September 1943) in

Boston, is an American anthropologist, best known for
her studies of so-called primitive art and its place in
the imaginaire of Western viewers.

In 2014 she was decorated by Frances Ministry of Culture as Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres for her contribution dterminante au rayonnement de la recherche
anthropologique et au dveloppement de la rexion sur
les muses de socit.

Career

2 Contributions

Price attended Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati

and then Harvard College, where she majored in French
Literature, graduating in 1965 after spending her junior
year at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1963 she married anthropology graduate student Richard Price and together
they began conducting eldwork together during summers in a shing village in Martinique (1963), in a
village in rural Andalusia, Spain (1964), and among Zinacanteco Indians in Chiapas, Mexico (1965 and 1966)
as part of a large Harvard-led project in the area.[1] After a brief trip to Suriname to explore the possibility of
conducting long-term eld research among the Saramaka
Maroons of the interior, the Prices returned for a twoyear residence in the village of Dangogo, on the upper
Suriname River. This experience formed the foundation
of much of their subsequent contribution to the discipline
of anthropology and the eld of African American studies.

Prices early work, which focused on the Maroons of Suriname, included Co-Wives and Calabashes, an analysis
of the ways that cultural ideas about the genders inuence Saramaka womens art and artistic activity and the
complementary contributions that these artistic activities
make to their social life,[4] which won the University of
Michigans Alice and Edith Hamilton Prize in Womens
Studies. Later, inspired by her experiences as a guest
curator of Maroon art for a UCLA-based traveling exhibition,[5] she began exploring Western constructions of
non-Western art. Her Primitive Art in Civilized Places
(published in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian,
Spanish, and Portuguese) has sparked much debate, rattling glass cases throughout the art world, as one critic
put it.[6] In her role as a Caribbeanist, she co-edited (with
Sidney W. Mintz) Caribbean Contours (dubbed the best
single book available today for courses on Caribbean
society and politics)[7] and together with Richard Price,
she has written books on a variety of subjects, from artist
Romare Beardens life in the Caribbean[8] to Maroon arts,
folktale traditions, public folklore, the history of anthropology, art forgery, and artifact collecting (this last illustrated by Sally Price with 50 pen-and-ink sketches).[9]
Her recent work has been based in two distant parts
of France--French Guiana, where she continues her
ethnographic studies of Maroon culture,[10] and Paris,
where she has written on the politics, both personal and
national, involved in the creation of Pariss new museum
of African, Asian, Oceanic, and Pre-Columbian art.[11]

Returning from Suriname, the Prices spent a year in the

Netherlands, working with Dutch scholars of Maroon societies such as anthropologist A.J.F. Kbben.[2] It was
only later that Sally Price attended graduate school, receiving her Ph.D in Cultural Anthropology from Johns
Hopkins University in 1982. Two subsequent years
of research in the Netherlands expanded relations with
Dutch colleagues, and in 2000, Sally Price was honored by being elected to the prestigious Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences).
After a dozen years at Johns Hopkins, followed by two
years in Paris for a combination of teaching and research,
the Prices returned to the shing village in Martinique
where they had begun their careers, establishing it as
a base for a series of visiting appointments (at, for example, the University of Minnesota, Stanford University, Princeton University, and the Universidade Federal
da Bahia in Brazil). In 1994, Sally Price took on a
one-semester-a-year post as Duane A. and Virginia S.
Dittman Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at the College of William and Mary, alternating her
time between the College and her base in Martinique.[3]

3 Books
1980. Afro-American Arts of the Suriname Rain
Forest (with Richard Price)
1984. Co-Wives and Calabashes
1985. Caribbean Contours (edited with Sidney W.
Mintz)
1

6
1988. John Gabriel Stedmans Narrative of a Five
Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of
Surinam (edited with Richard Price)
1989. Primitive Art in Civilized Places
1991. Two Evenings in Saramaka (with Richard
Price)
1992. Cest--dire (with Jean Jamin)
1992. Equatoria (with Richard Price)
1992. Stedmans Surinam: Life in an EighteenthCentury Slave Society (with Richard Price)
1994. On The Mall (with Richard Price)
1995. Enigma Variations: A Novel (with Richard
Price)
1999. Maroon Arts: Cultural Vitality in the African
Diaspora (with Richard Price)
2003. Les Marrons (with Richard Price)
2003. The Root of Roots: Or, How Afro-American
Anthropology Got Its Start (with Richard Price)
2006. Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension
(with Richard Price)
2007. Paris Primitive: Jacques Chiracs Museum on
the Quai Branly

References
Frank Bovenkerk, Frank Buis, & Henk Tromp
(eds.), Wetenschap en Partijdigheid: Opstellen voor
Andr J.F. Kbben. Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1990.
Victoria R. Bricker & Gary H. Gossen (eds.), Ethnographic Encounters in Southern Mesoamerica: Essays in Honor of Evon Zartman Vogt, Jr. Albany:
Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, SUNY, 1989.
Ellen Gruenbaum, Gender, Power, and Traditional
Arts. Reviews in Anthropology 14(1), 1987, pp.
3745.
Jorge Heine, The San Juan Star, 18 December 1986.
Carolyn J. Mooney, Notes from Academe: On
Martinique, 2 Scholars Explore the Permeability of
Cultural Boundaries. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 April 2000, p. B2.
Jennifer Schuessler, Inside Publishing. Lingua
Franca, September/October 1995, p. 26.
Evon Z. Vogt, Bibliography of the Harvard Chiapas
Project: The First Twenty Years, 1957-1977. Cambridge MA, Peabody Museum Press, 1987.

EXTERNAL LINKS

5 Notes
[1] Evon Z. Vogt, Bibliography of the Harvard Chiapas
Project: The First Twenty Years, 1957-1977. Cambridge
MA, Peabody Museum Press, 1987; Victoria R. Bricker
& Gary H. Gossen (eds.), Ethnographic Encounters in
Southern Mesoamerica: Essays in Honor of Evon Zartman
Vogt, Jr. Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies,
SUNY, 1989.
[2] Frank Bovenkerk, Frank Buis, & Henk Tromp (eds.),
Wetenschap en Partijdigheid: Opstellen voor Andr J.F.
Kbben. Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1990.
[3] Carolyn J. Mooney, Notes from Academe: On Martinique, 2 Scholars Explore the Permeability of Cultural
Boundaries. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 April
2000, p. B2
[4] Ellen Gruenbaum, Gender, Power, and Traditional Arts.
Reviews in Anthropology 14(1), 1987, pp. 37-45.
[5] Afro-American Arts from the Suriname Rain Forest.
Frederick S. Wight Gallery, UCLA; Dallas Museum of
Fine Arts; The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore; American
Museum of Natural History, New York (1980-1982).
[6] Jennifer Schuessler, Inside Publishing. Lingua Franca,
September/October 1995, p. 26.
[7] Jorge Heine, The San Juan Star, 18 December 1986.
[8] Sally Price and Richard Price, Romare Bearden: The
Caribbean Dimension. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
[9] Richard Price and Sally Price, Equatoria. New York,
Routledge, 1992.
[10] Sally Price, Into the Mainstream: Shifting Authenticities
in Art. American Ethnologist 34/4(2007):603-620.
[11] Sally Price, Paris Primitive: Jacques Chiracs Museum on
the Quai Branly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
See also The Enduring Power of Primitivism in Gitti
Salami & Monica Blackmun Vison (eds.), 'A Companion
to Modern African Art' (West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell,
2013), pp. 447 465.

6 External links
http://www.richandsally.net

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