Max Carocci
Max Carocci is a London-based anthropologist and curator. Having curated exhibitions at the British Museum, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Weltkulturen Museum (Frankfurt, Germany), and, most recently, the Venice Biennale, he continues his work with contemporary artists, and research in the broader context of World Arts. Recipient of a Sainsbury Research Unit Fellowship (University of East Anglia) Max Carocci is currently conducting research on the representation of Native North Americans in visual arts. Over the years he has been lecturing in world arts, anthropology and museums. Max has an extensive experience in public talks, academic consultancy, and museum-based practice.
Project manager and academic consultant focussed on interdisciplinary work between anthropology, the arts, and visual cultures. Consultant for Bonhams auction house, The Royal Academy UK, The British Museum (UK), Horniman Museum (UK), The American Museum (Bath, UK), and private art galleries in the UK and the EU.
Max has worked on several curatorial projects in Europe and the Americas (Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil), and continues to advise and write about indigenous American arts, and cultures.
Documentary maker, and video consultant for museums (e.g. The British Museum, Museum of London), learned institutions, and community projects looking into using his expertise in collaborations with artists, galleries, and film institutes. Library-based online editor/indexer.
Specialties: Anthropology, Indigenous American arts and societies, visual and material culture, world arts, museology, contemporary and indigenous arts
Project manager and academic consultant focussed on interdisciplinary work between anthropology, the arts, and visual cultures. Consultant for Bonhams auction house, The Royal Academy UK, The British Museum (UK), Horniman Museum (UK), The American Museum (Bath, UK), and private art galleries in the UK and the EU.
Max has worked on several curatorial projects in Europe and the Americas (Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil), and continues to advise and write about indigenous American arts, and cultures.
Documentary maker, and video consultant for museums (e.g. The British Museum, Museum of London), learned institutions, and community projects looking into using his expertise in collaborations with artists, galleries, and film institutes. Library-based online editor/indexer.
Specialties: Anthropology, Indigenous American arts and societies, visual and material culture, world arts, museology, contemporary and indigenous arts
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Books by Max Carocci
The editors recognise the urgency to explore them together in an unprecedented exercise which, to date, has only been attempted with reference to selected disciplines, periods, or regions. The contributors to this collection reignite debates around the status of ‘things’ identified as ‘art’ through the lens of theories drawn from new materialism, new
animism, and multi-species and relational thinking. They are concerned with how and when art-like things may exceed conventional understandings of ‘art’ and ‘representation’ to fully articulate multiple scenarios or ‘manifestations’ in which they interface with academic discourses around animism and shamanism. The authors put in
sharp focus the materiality of art-things while stressing their agentive, emotive, and performative aspects, looking beyond their appearances to what they do and who they may be or become in their dealings with diverse interlocutors. The contributors are united in their recognition that things and images are deeply entangled with how different communities, human and other-than-human, experience life, shi<ing attention from an obsolete concept of worldview to how reality is perceived through all the senses, in all its aspects, both tangible and intangible.
Warriors of the Plains skilfully interweaves a survey of North American Plains Indian history with a generously detailed examination of Plains Indian warrior art - weapons, amulets, clothing, and ceremonial objects - with particular emphasis on their ritual use and symbolic meanings. Replete with both modern and archival photographs from the British Museum, this book offers a novel approach to a fascinating subject, while integrating history, anthropology, and personal narratives.
Showcasing meticulous scholarship and the impressive collection of the British Museum, Warriors of the Plains is a comprehensive and significant contribution to the study of North American History.
Max Carocci is a project curator at the British Museum. His previous books include Ritual and Honour: Warriors of the North American Plains.
Carocci_Warriors.jpg
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New insights emerge from the latest scientific probings into the characterisation, sources, mining and distribution of turquoise. Also in this volume, studies of precious turquoise on prehispanic mosaics help to restore cultural meaning to this exquisitely crafted category of material. The significance and status of turquoise in the Aztec world is reflected in contributions that encompass poetry, thought and symbolism. Both continuity and innovation are reflected in descriptions of the turquoise jewellery arts of the American Southwest, providing fascinating comparisons with archaeological and early historical material. Different authors examine the ethos and practice of collecting, both for museums and the individual, and, in so doing, look to the past as well as to the present. This lavishly illustrated volume provides a unique perspective on the mastery of turquoise with a diverse exchange of ideas between the academic and the popular.
The book provides a brief overview of Plains Indian warrior arts by highlighting the ceremonial and ritual aspects of warfare practices of Native Americans until the 21st c.
Papers by Max Carocci
before the age of photography offer a precious window into the
peninsula’s past inhabitants. The synoptic analysis of the material
culture depicted in this imagery, from both religious and secular
sources, reveals that the credibility of the pictures is based on
highly contingent notions of truth that emerge from contextual
relationships between images and texts. The essay maintains that
representational differences mirror distinct ways of thinking
about the depiction of ethnographic subjects. Although variability
in style may depend on artistic ability and skill, diversity in
subject and mode of representation are as much the product of
multiple intermedial entanglements as they are the result of
implicit aims and purposes. This unprecedented comparative
exercise, while eliciting questions about what counts as accuracy
in distinctive artistic and literary genres, encourages a reflection
on the nature and role of images whose lives straddle between
art and anthropology.
The editors recognise the urgency to explore them together in an unprecedented exercise which, to date, has only been attempted with reference to selected disciplines, periods, or regions. The contributors to this collection reignite debates around the status of ‘things’ identified as ‘art’ through the lens of theories drawn from new materialism, new
animism, and multi-species and relational thinking. They are concerned with how and when art-like things may exceed conventional understandings of ‘art’ and ‘representation’ to fully articulate multiple scenarios or ‘manifestations’ in which they interface with academic discourses around animism and shamanism. The authors put in
sharp focus the materiality of art-things while stressing their agentive, emotive, and performative aspects, looking beyond their appearances to what they do and who they may be or become in their dealings with diverse interlocutors. The contributors are united in their recognition that things and images are deeply entangled with how different communities, human and other-than-human, experience life, shi<ing attention from an obsolete concept of worldview to how reality is perceived through all the senses, in all its aspects, both tangible and intangible.
Warriors of the Plains skilfully interweaves a survey of North American Plains Indian history with a generously detailed examination of Plains Indian warrior art - weapons, amulets, clothing, and ceremonial objects - with particular emphasis on their ritual use and symbolic meanings. Replete with both modern and archival photographs from the British Museum, this book offers a novel approach to a fascinating subject, while integrating history, anthropology, and personal narratives.
Showcasing meticulous scholarship and the impressive collection of the British Museum, Warriors of the Plains is a comprehensive and significant contribution to the study of North American History.
Max Carocci is a project curator at the British Museum. His previous books include Ritual and Honour: Warriors of the North American Plains.
Carocci_Warriors.jpg
View large image
New insights emerge from the latest scientific probings into the characterisation, sources, mining and distribution of turquoise. Also in this volume, studies of precious turquoise on prehispanic mosaics help to restore cultural meaning to this exquisitely crafted category of material. The significance and status of turquoise in the Aztec world is reflected in contributions that encompass poetry, thought and symbolism. Both continuity and innovation are reflected in descriptions of the turquoise jewellery arts of the American Southwest, providing fascinating comparisons with archaeological and early historical material. Different authors examine the ethos and practice of collecting, both for museums and the individual, and, in so doing, look to the past as well as to the present. This lavishly illustrated volume provides a unique perspective on the mastery of turquoise with a diverse exchange of ideas between the academic and the popular.
The book provides a brief overview of Plains Indian warrior arts by highlighting the ceremonial and ritual aspects of warfare practices of Native Americans until the 21st c.
before the age of photography offer a precious window into the
peninsula’s past inhabitants. The synoptic analysis of the material
culture depicted in this imagery, from both religious and secular
sources, reveals that the credibility of the pictures is based on
highly contingent notions of truth that emerge from contextual
relationships between images and texts. The essay maintains that
representational differences mirror distinct ways of thinking
about the depiction of ethnographic subjects. Although variability
in style may depend on artistic ability and skill, diversity in
subject and mode of representation are as much the product of
multiple intermedial entanglements as they are the result of
implicit aims and purposes. This unprecedented comparative
exercise, while eliciting questions about what counts as accuracy
in distinctive artistic and literary genres, encourages a reflection
on the nature and role of images whose lives straddle between
art and anthropology.
Insights gained from five years experience will inform a discussion about cultural policies, relationships with source communities, ethics in museum practice and perceptions of non-western arts among the wider public.
The exhibition presents a selection of 35 photographs from the RAI's photographic archives that cover areas as different as early physical anthropology, visual records of material culture, as well as social and cultural life of Native North Americans between the 19th c. and the early decades of the 20th c. Collections include images of peoples from Greenland and the Pacific Northwest coast, the Southwest USA, Canadian Great Lakes, the Great Plains and the Eastern woodlands