Howard Morphy

rdf:langString Howard Morphy

rdf:langString Howard Morphy (born 13 June 1947) is a British anthropologist who has conducted extensive fieldwork in northern Australia, mainly among the Yolngu people. He was founding director of the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University and is currently a distinguished professor of anthropology. Morphy is an anthropologist of art and film. He is co-editor of The Anthropology of Art: a Reader (2006, Blackwell's, with Morgan Perkins) and Rethinking Visual Anthropology (1997, Yale University Press, with Marcus Banks), two keys texts in these fields. He has also published in the area of Australian Aboriginal art, especially Ancestral Connections (Chicago 1991), and a general survey book Aboriginal Art (Phaidon, 1998) as well as Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-Cultural Categories (Berg, 2007), described by one reviewer as demonstrating his 'encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of Yolngu art production', whilst also noting it was 'no easy read'. He has also produced a multimedia biography The Art of Narritjin Maymuru with Pip Deveson and Katie Hayne (ANU epress 2005). Morphy has also worked closely filmmakers and curated exhibitions including Yingapungapu at the National Museum of Australia.