Profs & Pints Baltimore: A World Heritage of Tattooing

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “A World Heritage of Tattooing,” with Lars Krutak, DC-based anthropologist, research associate at the Museum of International Folk Art, author or editor of several books on tattooing around the world, and former host of the Discovery Channel’s Tattoo Hunter.

Since time immemorial, astonishingly diverse forms of tattooing have been produced by various cultures of the world. Some employed tattoos for therapeutic or cosmetic purposes, or to mark special life achievements, or to assert social identity. Others marked the body with symbols that were understood to promote fertility, protect the body from malevolent spirits, or carry them safely into the afterlife.

Join world traveler, anthropologist, and photographer Dr. Lars Krutak as he shares his 20-plus year journey to understand how tattoos “make” the people who wear them, part of which he chronicled in his Discovery Channel series, as well as Netflix’s Explained and the forthcoming feature documentary Treasure of the Rice Terraces.

In a richly illustrated talk based on his own field research and the accounts of explorers, historians, and anthropologists, he’ll talk about tattoos around the world dating from 3000 BCE to the present. He’ll explore ancient tattooing traditions and reveal how tattoos exposed individual desires and fears, cultural values, spirituality, and ancestral ties that were written on the body in ink. Dr. Krutak will also discuss his new book Tattoo Traditions of Asia, the first single volume on subject, to be published in October 2024. He’ll have available signed copies of his books, which include The Tattooing Arts of Tribal Women. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5. Talk begins at 6:30.)