update – summer 2016

The book on Greece and Rome with Gary (Devore) [Link] is close to being done. We’ve chosen to offer a quite different kind of account of antiquity and we’re delighted with the scope of its underlying model and perspective (archaeological and focused on the topic of membership of body politic). It’s the success of our…

Is ‘Design Thinking’ the New Liberal Arts?

Peter Miller’s piece about design thinking and history, more accurately archaeology (because archaeology deals with the past-in-the-present), is in the latest edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Is ‘Design Thinking’ the New Liberal Arts?. Here are some highlights that convey a key message – that human centered design and design thinking, about which I…

car collection – connoisseurship and archaeology

This is one of a series of comments on the 8th biennial symposium “Connoisseurship and the Collectible Car” held at the Revs Institute for Automotive Research in Naples, Florida in March 2015. [Link] The symposia at the Revs Institute bring together people passionate about collecting cars, passionate about thinking deeply around questions of conservation and…

design and antiquarians – 4

This is a comment on the seminar series currently running between Stanford and Bard Graduate Center. [Link] [Link] This week – George Kubler’s extraordinary “Shape of time” from 1962, and the philosophy and archaeology of R.G.Collingwood [Link]. Both crossed (disciplinary) borders in looking at how we connect things and history. A key question (of pragmatography)…

design and antiquarians – 2

This is a comment on the seminar series currently running between Stanford and Bard Graduate Center. [Link] This week – the origins of the design museum in the nineteenth century. The history of design history.   The Victoria and Albert, South Kensington, London – original facade – established to improve British manufacturing