Professor Loans 14 Paintings to Libson Exhibit

Ákos Östör, professor of anthropology and professor of film studies, loaned 14 new paintings to an ongoing exhibition held at the National Museum of Etnologia in Lisbon. The paintings are created by women in the Naya Village in Bengal, India who have formed a scroll painters’ cooperative in an effort to keep this centuries old practice alive. Östör is the co-director of a film, “Singing Pictures,” which examines the ancient art of “singing-scroll making” in Bengali and features the Chitrakar women. The 14 new scrolls, part of the exhibit “Singing Pictures: Art and Performance of Naya Women,” will substitute those that have already been on exhibition.

The museum also purchased a whole batch of paintings from the Naya women for their collections.

In September, Östör and the Naya women donated dozens of rare Yanomamo, Sudanese and Eritrean artifacts/ethnographic objects.