26/09/2025
We posted back in June on the publication of Tanya Argounova-Low and Alison Brown’s open access book 'Narrative Objects: Museums, the Sakha Summer Festival and Cultural Revival in Siberia'. We’re now delighted to let you know that the book has won the Council for Museum Anthropology’s Book Award for 2025! And well worth quoting the CMA:
The book reveals the opportunities and possibilities that emerge when museum anthropologists, Indigenous anthropologists, artists, and scholars collaborate to examine how objects in museum collections can prompt narratives from local communities engaged in cultural revitalization efforts. The authors skillfully balance their collective authorship with their respective areas of individual expertise as well as with the stories of their interlocutors. The CMA book awards committee celebrates this work as a powerful model of co-authorship and collaboration for future anthropological scholarship. Argounova-Low and Brown's work addresses a region in which there is limited scholarship in English about museum work. Finally, the book reflects the values of the CMA, including meaningful community partnerships and the creative use of curatorial practices to share research beyond museum walls.
Narrative Objects is concerned with the conversations that arise when artists, scholars, and museum practitioners come together with historic objects. Its focus
