Visual Aesthetics at Chaco Canyon
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Dates
July 21–24, 2026
Location
School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico
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A four-day summer course taught by Robert Weiner, a postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College, examining the visual culture of Chaco Canyon's monumental architecture and material world. Through lectures, discussions, and group visual analysis, participants explore how T-shaped doorways, turquoise mosaics, and optical illusions on pottery reveal relationships between aesthetics, religion, politics, and historical change in Chacoan society. The course includes a field visit to Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque and is limited to fifteen participants at the School for Advanced Research campus.
Participants
School for Advanced Research
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Established in 1907, the School for Advanced Research (SAR) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational institution headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that provides the time, space, and inspiration for innovative, creative work at the intersection of the arts, humanities, and social sciences. For over a hundred years SAR has facilitated intellectual inquiry and human understanding through residencies and seminars for scholars and fellowship programs for Native artists. The organization is also home to the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC), a leader in community-advised and collaborative Indigenous arts engagement and collections management. SAR advances understanding of humanity through a unique alchemy of creative practice and scholarly research in Native American arts, anthropology, and related disciplines.
