Marilyn Houlberg

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Marilyn Houlberg is Professor of Art and Cultural Anthropology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, Marilyn Houlberg studied liberal arts and art history, theory, and criticism at the University of Chicago and the University College, London.

Houlberg has travelled to Haiti since the 1960s, where she studied the mysterious culture of Vodou.

In 1999 she was the curator of the show, "Creative Inspiration: The Arts of Haitian Vodou" at the Musee d'Art Haitien du College Saint Pierre, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and in 2001 she originated and curated the traveling exhibition, "Vodou Visionaries" at the Center for Intuitive & Outsider Art, Chicago, IL, which presented contributions by contemporary Haitian artists placed in the context of Vodou's vibrant and complex cosmology. In 2004, Houlberg was the curator of the show "Vibrant Spirits: The Art of Derek Webster".

Houlberg shares Justine Cordwell's interests in the systems of symbolism in clothing and hairstyles as related to social change in West Africa and the diaspora.

The Marilyn Houlberg photographic archive documents cultural aspects of post-Independence Nigeria during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. This archive is currently being catalogued for the Elisofon Library, National Museum of African Art, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

[edit] Publications

• "Ibeji Images of the Yoruba", African Arts, Vol. 7 (1973)
• "Haitian Studio Photography: A Hidden World of Images". In Rebeecca Busselle, ed., Haiti: Feeding the Spirit (1992)
• (Introduction) Stephen Marc, The black trans-Atlantic experience: street life and culture in England, Ghana, Jamaica, and the United States (1992)
• Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou (exhibition catalog, 1998)
• (Introduction) Phyllis Galembo, Vodou: Visions and Voices of Haiti (2005)

Houlberg also contributed several articles to periodicals such as African Arts and The New Observations Magazine.