Annual Richard A. Macksey Lecture: K. Anthony Appiah

Description

K. Anthony Appiah, a professor of philosophy and law at New York University, will give the Annual Richard A. Macksey Lecture, titled "Whose Heritage? Preservation, Possession, and Peoples," for the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute. Reception to follow.

About the Lecture

Museums and monument funds typically understand the works that they collect, display, and preserve through a concept of heritage. Heritage is meant to explain why various works are to be valued or disavowed, repatriated or collected, dismantled or preserved. Yet it's a concept that's interwoven with other concepts—ancestry, identity, property, memorialization—in ways that can create confusion. Gaining clarity about cultural heritage can help us understand the broader heritage of humankind.

About the Speaker

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a professor of philosophy and law at NYU. Appiah was born in London, where his parents met, but moved as an infant to Kumasi, Ghana, where he grew up and where his three sisters were born. He took Bachelor of Arts and doctoral degrees in philosophy at Cambridge University and has taught philosophy in Ghana, France, Britain, and the U.S., with professorships at Yale, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, and Princeton. In 2012, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama. His most recent book is The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.