2
I meet fascinating people every time we put one of these issues together. Sometimes
they’re in corporeal form, and it’s often a pleasure to get a drink together
and hear what they have to say. More often, they’re on the other end of a telephone
line or an email thread and things are more focused, though always pleasant—
well, almost always. And then there are the ones where interaction is purely
one way, more often than not because they’re dead and I can get to know them
only through their writings. While this is a more challenging relationship, it’s no
less fascinating than the others. Delving deep into someone else’s research often
unlocks telling insights into what their interests were, how their perceptions were
skewed, and, in short, who they were.
In preparing this issue, I had the pleasure of getting to know in the latter sort of
way a particularly colorful fi gure, Tom Harnett Harrisson. The article on a small
Dayak bronze in this issue by yours truly is based on a 1964 essay by Harrisson
that was due for a bit of an update, given the increased access to information we
enjoy half a century later. Researching this involved not only a close look at the
original essay but also looking into Harrisson’s background to understand certain details. It was fascinating.
Perhaps best remembered as the “barefoot anthropologist,” his career was remarkably multifaceted
and spanned an incredible number of fi elds, among them anthropology, museum curation, ornithology,
exploration, journalism, broadcast news, military, guerrilla leadership, archaeology, fi lmmaking, nature
conservation, and writing. He was one of the founders of Mass-Observation, a project that compiled the
experiences and perceptions of ordinary people in an effort to counter governmental propaganda. He
organized the Kelabit Dayak in a disruptive resistance movement against the Japanese occupation during
WWII. Afterward, he served as the curator for the Sarawak Museum from 1947–1966, the collection of
which he greatly expanded. He led archaeological investigations that resulted in the discovery of the oldest
Homo sapiens skull in island Southeast Asia. He published extensively and usually meticulously, though
he occasionally made unsupportable leaps between fact and conclusion. Perhaps most engaging, he wrote
about his involvement in “Operation Cat Drop,” in which RAF supply drops (or perhaps drop) included
cats to replace those that died as a result of exposure to an insecticide that had been deployed to combat
malaria, resulting in an overwhelming infestation of rats in a remote Kelabit community. He is remembered
as eccentric, diffi cult if not impossible to get along with, resistant to authority fi gures, and brilliant.
The title of his biography, The Most Offending Soul Alive, researched and written after his death by his
friend and Sarawak neighbor Judith Heimann is telling. It’s a good read.
Harrisson is just one of a near endless cadre of individuals (and individualists) who, despite the wide
variance in their personalities and circumstances, have striven to bring a better understanding of the signifi
cance of far-fl ung cultures around the world. In this issue we see them range from the Kaiserin-Augusta
Fluss-Expedition of 1912/13, which resulted in the revelation of a singular art form from Papua New
Guinea, to the remarkable Native American material of Chuck and Valerie Diker, New York collectors
who have brought a new vision of Native American art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Prominent in
this group are the remarkable variety of authors who generously share their expertise here, making it available
to scholars and enthusiasts alike. Through their efforts, each of our issues allows us to understand and
appreciate the beauty and diversity of the world we live in just a little bit better.
Jonathan Fogel
Editorial
Our cover shows a photograph by Rudolf
or Helene Oldenburg, Tanzmasken;
Bamum (Masked Dancer; Bamum), taken
in Cameroon between 1907 and 1913.
Silver gelatin print. 11.5 x 16.5 cm.
Weltmuseum Wien, Fotosammlung, inv. VF 17490.