Anthropology Unmasked: Museums, Science, and Politics in New York City - Volume I: The Putnam-Boas Era

by Stanley A. Freed

Anthropology Unmasked is the 100-year history of one of America’s leading Departments of Anthropology and of the growth of the American Museum of Natural History itself from its uncertain beginnings in the 19th century to rank today in the first tier of such museums worldwide. The book features the groundbreaking research by a cast of extraordinary characters who made a success of difficult and dangerous projects in remote places – from Siberia to Greenland to the Straits of Magellan – where danger was routine and where heroics were necessary and expected.

Dr. Stanley Freed, curator emeritus of Anthropology at the AMNH, introduces the vivid personalities who developed anthropology and the major early museums. With over 50 years experience that included personal relationships with some of these men and women, Freed offers fresh insights, an “inside-the-museum” point of view, and heretofore unpublished material.

Genres: Anthropology

600 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2011

About the author

Stanley A. Freed, a native of Ohio, took his PhD in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1957. After almost two years of fieldwork in rural India with his wife, Dr. Ruth S. Freed, and a year as a visiting staff member at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Freed joined the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in 1960, where he has remained to the present day. He was in charge of the scientific aspects of four permanent exhibition halls and of several temporary exhibitions. He has written extensively on museums.

Reviews

[Paisley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's what famed, anthropologist and author Ian Tattersall said about Anthropology Unmasked:

For over a century, an evolving microcosm of Anthropology’s turbulent history has hidden behind the staid façade of the American Museum of Natural History. From an insider’s perspective, the well-known ethnologist Stan Freed engagingly introduces us to an amazing cast of explorers, eccentrics, idealists, pranksters and forbidding intellectuals: an unlikely mix that played a key role in establishing the science of Anthropology as we know it today.