Michael F. Brown

Michael F. Brown, Ph.D., is president emeritus of the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a century-old research institution that supports Native American artists and innovative social research in anthropology and related fields. Prior to his appointment at SAR, Brown taught at Williams College for more than thirty years, retiring in 2014 as the Lambert Professor of Anthropology & Latin American Studies, Emeritus.

Brown is the author of six books, including Tsewa’s Gift: Magic & Meaning in an Amazonian Society, War of Shadows: The Struggle for Utopia in the Peruvian Amazon (co-authored with Eduardo Fernández), The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age, Who Owns Native Culture?, and Upriver: The Turbulent Life and Times of an Amazonian People. He has also published many academic and popular articles dealing with Amazonian cultures, alternative spirituality, medical anthropology, social movements, policies regarding Indigenous cultural and intellectual property, and the impact of bureaucracy on everyday life.

Among the highlights of his presidency at SAR was the organization's first-ever major museum exhibition, "Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery," which was based on SAR's outstanding Native American art collection supplemented by pottery from the collection of the Vilcek Foundation of New York. The exhibition was largely curated by Pueblo people. It toured nationally to major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Saint Louis Art Museum, among others.