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Winter 2023 Newsletter Submission

DEADLINE: 15 January 2023

(to be published late January/early February)

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The Collaboration, Collections, and Restitution Best Practices for North American Museums Holding African Objects Working Group (CCRBP), an ad-hoc ACASA committee, has started its initial work towards the goal of producing a set of best practices for the restitution of African arts from North American museum collections. Over the course of the summer, most of the subcommittees began meeting regularly to begin crafting their recommendations for the steering committee. If you wish to know more about the CCRBP please visit the ACASA website to read about the mission, history, and various subcommittees. Anyone interested in joining the group should reach out via email to the steering committee

ACASA Annual Business Meeting

ACASA members are invited to attend our next Annual Business Meeting. Learn more about the organization's past and present, and say farewell to the outgoing ACASA board members while welcoming the newly elected ones!

African Studies Association Annual Meeting

Philadelphia, PA

Saturday, 19 November 2022, 12–1:30 pm

For up-to-date information, including details about a digital version of this meeting, visit the ASA annual meeting website

Publications

Collector's Series: Artists & Cities

We are sharing the news of a 280-page hybrid publication titled 'Collector's Series: Artists & Cities' by TSA Art Magazine, led by Bukola Oyebode from Nigeria, a member of ACASA. Featuring sixty artists/collectives from six African cities and five women leaders in the African art world, it examines the relationship between art, artists, and city-making. Contributors include respected scholars and critical voices from the continent such as Bernard Akoi-Jackson (PhD), Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa, Kuukuwa Manful, Bongani Kona, Ashraf Jamal, Adjoa Armah, Mbassi Landry, Jude Anogwih, Phokeng Setai and Tandazani Dhlakama.  

Some of the artists featured are Mmakhotso Lamola, Zayaan Khan, Bolatito Aderemi-Ibitola, Afroscope/Isaac Nana Opoku, Amina Agueznay, Igshaan Adams, Lois Arde-Acquah, Latifah Idriss, Mohamed Arejdal, Fatiha Zemmouri, Michael Tsegaye, Amine El Gotaibi, Jumoke Sanwo, Zohra Opoku, Léonard Pongo, Nelson Makengo, Lhola Amira, Sethembile Msezane, Godelive Kasangati Kabena, Haroon Gunn Salie, Alexandre Kyungu Mwilambwe, Mukenge/Schellhammer, Sarah Abu Bushra, Robel Temesgen, Ayọ Akínwándé, Akwasi Bediako Afrane, M’Barek Bouhchichi, Farata Collectif and Cultural Intelligence Association (CIA Lagos).

ISSN: 2645-3118

World barcode: 9772645311001-01

Website 

Image: Collector’s Series: Artists & Cities' publication on display at 16/16 in Lagos. 

Rush Me

An online virtual space that traces the links between Africa, the Caribbean, and the UK in terms of Global healthcare, and the artist's family is now open. The space can be added to, augmented, and countered. New rooms opening soon on the Military and Transport.

• Experience a walk-through here
• Navigate the space yourself here
• Contact the Artist to contribute

Sonia Barrett is a Visual Artist Madowell Fellow and 2020 recipient of the Yale Mellon Artist/Practitioner Fellow in the Department of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, Yale University. This project is supported by Up Projects, Michael Barrington-Hibbert and the Arts Council.

Image: Screen shot of "Rush me" virtual space

Burnished: Zulu Ceramics Between Rural and Urban South Africa

Winner of a 2020 CAA Millard Meiss Publication Award, Elizabeth Perrill's new monograph, Burnished: Zulu Ceramics Between Rural and Urban South Africa, was released in June by Indiana University

Burnished engages directly with individual artists and specific vessels, fracturing assumptions that Zulu ceramicists are resistant to rural transformation and insulated from urban realities. Perrill shares compelling narratives of women ceramic artists and the sophisticated beer pots they create—their aesthetic choices, audiences, production, and artistic lives. Simultaneously, Perrill documents the manner in which and reasons why ceramic arts, and at times the artists themselves, capitalize upon bucolic stereotypes of rural womanhood, are constrained by artistic methods, or chafe against definitions of what qualifies as a Zulu pot.

Revealing how white South Africans and global art gatekeepers have continually twisted the designation of Zulu ceramics before, during, and after apartheid, Burnished provides an engaging look at the artistry of entrepreneurial Black women too often erased from historical records.

ISBN: 9780253061874. 276 Pages, 90 color illus., 2 b&w tables.

Purchase 

Image: Burnished cover photographs courtesy Elizabeth Perrill. 

J.B. Murray and the Scripts and Spirit Forms of Africa: Making the Connections

This is to announce the publishing of the book, J.B. Murray and the Scripts and Spirit Forms of Africa: Making the Connections, by Licia Clifton-James and Maude Southwell Wahlman. The book is a unique exploration of Southern African American art and its connections to healing and protection in West Africa. This book takes you from the tiny town of Mitchell, Georgia, in the Southern United States, across the Atlantic Ocean to Touba, Senegal, in West Africa, the holy city of the Mouride brotherhood. Protection through writing is both an Islamic and indigenous African tradition. Art Historians, after seeing Murray’s work, called it masterful art. It is my contention that Murray possessed knowledge that, unbeknownst to him or his relatives, was passed along to him by his African ancestors. This knowledge is also seen in the work of other African and African American artists in this manuscript, which shows continuity across a wider group as opposed to just one artist.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-8000-8 AND ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-8000-8, 188 pages, 100 illustrations

LinkedIn

Image: Cover of book, with illustration by Licia Clifton-James, PhD

Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola 

Cécile Fromont's new book Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola (Penn State Press: 2022. ISBN: 978-0-271-09218-8. 336 pages) examines an extraordinary atlas of vivid watercolors and drawings that Italian Capuchin Franciscans, veterans of Kongo and Angola missions, composed between 1650 and 1750 for the training of future missionaries. These “practical guides” present the intricacies of the natural, social, and religious environment of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century west-central Africa and outline the primarily visual catechization methods the friars devised for the region. 

The volume includes full-color reproductions of the largely unpublished images, in conjunction with rarely seen related material. Taking a bold new, Africa-centered approach to the study of early modern global interactions, Fromont demonstrates how visual creations such as the Capuchin vignettes, though European in form and craftsmanship, emerged not from a single perspective but rather from cross-cultural interaction. She models a fresh way to think about images created across cultures, highlighting the formative role that cultural encounter itself played in their conception, execution, and modes of operation.

Twitter 

Purchase 

Benin. Looted History

Catalogue accompanying the special exhibition Benin. Looted History edited by Barbara Plankensteiner. It provides a comprehensive overview of the state of research on the looted art and history of the Kingdom of Benin. With a focus on the provenance of Hamburg's collections and the history of restitution developments. Currently only available in German language. With contributions from Barbara Plankensteiner, Abba Isa Tijani, Godfrey Osaisonor Ekhator, Ralf Wiechmann, Henrietta Lidchi, Silke Reuther, Jamie Dau, Felicity Bodenstein, Kokunre Agbontaen-Eghafona, Anne Luther, Onotie Ogbebor.

ISBN 9783944193175

268 pages with numerous illustrations

Available on the MARKK´s museum onlineshop 

Website

Image: Catalogue Benin. Geraubte Geschichte 2022 edited by Barbara Plankensteiner © Museum am Rothenbaum - Kulturen und Künste der Welt, Hamburg

Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint: Shirdi Sai Baba’s Presence

A volume entitled Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint: Shirdi Sai Baba’s Presence edited by Smriti Srinivas, Neelima Jeychandran, and Al Roberts is dedicated to the memory of former ACASA President and Leadership Award-winner Mary “Polly” Nooter Roberts (d. 2018).

Essays by twelve worldwide scholars concern a South Asian saint (d. 1918) who defied religious communitarianism and attracts devotees from all faiths. Baba’s followers include increasing numbers of sub-Saharan Africans. One of the book’s chapters features Polly’s unpublished research of 2009 with artists in Mauritius, India, and Germany who realize works for those given to Baba––as Polly herself increasingly became as she followed her eight-year cancer path. A chapter by Al and Polly Roberts compares visual practices associated with Baba to those of Sheikh Amadu Bamba as Baba’s Senegalese contemporary and fellow Sufi half a world away. Neelima Jeychandran offers an interleaf about Baba in the growing Hindu community of Ghana (ten thousand strong and counting), while Dana Rush writes of Baba as an “Indian Spirit” associated with Mami Wata in Togo and the Republic of Bénin.

Routledge will publish the book in 2022 in hardback, paperback, and electronic editions. 

Publisher website

Ethiopian Church Art: Painters, Patrons, Purveyors

We are very pleased to announce the publication of Ethiopian Church Art: Painters, Patrons, Purveyors by Raymond Silverman and Neal Sobania. ISBN: 978-1-59907-290-6 (Paperback), 978-1-59907-291-3 (Hardcover).

Sumptuously illustrated with over 300 color photographs, this groundbreaking study explores the vital role of devotional paintings in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church through the lives and work of the individuals who make, commission and sell them. Designed to engage and inform the reader both visually and textually, Ethiopian Church Art will be of interest to a wide and diverse audience.

Additional information about the book may be found on the Tsehai Publishers website

For a limited time, until 31 December 2022, the publisher is offering a 25% discount on both the hardcover and paperback editions of the book. To take advantage of the discount you will need to use this link which will take you to the discount page on the publisher's website: 

Feel free to share this link with colleagues or friends. We also encourage you to ask that your libraries purchase the book.

Image: Ethiopian Church Art: Painters, Patrons, Purveyors published September 1, 2022

What is African Art? A Short History

What is African Art? A Short History by Peter Probst provides the first monographic historiography of the field of African art studies. The guiding question is as simple as it is profound: What are we actually talking about when we talk about African art? Divided into three parts, What is African art? interrogates the shifting answers to this question from the late 19th century to the present. An essential read on a field that has become the subject of lively debates about its colonial history and the quest for a decolonial future. 

What is African Art? A Short History will be out 6 December 2022, with the University of Chicago Press. 

248 pages | 91 halftones | 6 x 9 |

ISBN 9780226793153. paperback $35

Website 

Opening Soon & Ongoing

New Art Gallery 

Invitation for Artist representation/consignment for African art collection to open mid-2024

Saltire Gallerie, founded by ACASA member Laurel Birch Kilgore, opened last month with a collection titled 'A Sense of Place: Scottish Landscapes' featuring 19th-century and 20th-century oil on canvas paintings. The Gallerie is looking forward to featuring an African/Malawian art collection in 2024 with both contemporary and traditional artworks including Malawian artifacts, paintings, and pottery; carved Chokwe throne, West African female figure circa 1900, water buffalo clay pipe, Tikar large rider and horse bronze, 20th century three-figure Benin bronze and more. Additional consignment items and artist representations will be considered in 2023. 

Contact the gallery for more information or an appointment.

Saltire Gallerie is located in a historic residence circa 1794 on two acres in Hillsborough NC by Chapel Hill. The Gallerie and grounds are available for events including weddings, art fairs and more. Saltire Gallerie is on the Town 'Last Friday of the Month' ArtWalk. Find our Gallerie on 1st Dibs and Hillsborough Arts Council, or visit our website. 

Image: Chokwe mid-1900s carved wood and bronze/copper (c) Laurel Birch Kilgore, Saltire Gallerie  

Bámigbóyè: A Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá Tradition

Curated by James Green, Frances and Benjamin Benenson Foundation Associate Curator of African Art, Bámigbóyè: A Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá Tradition is the first exhibition dedicated to the workshop of the Nigerian artist Moshood Olúṣọmọ Bámigbóyè (ca. 1885–1975). Part of a generation of Yorùbá woodcarvers with flourishing workshops in southwestern Nigeria, Bámigbóyè was highly regarded for the masks that he made in the 1920s and 1930s for ceremonies called Ẹpa. Today, these masks are considered some of the most spectacular and complex works of Yorùbá art ever created. Drawn from the collections of national and international museums, including the Yale University Art Gallery and the National Museum in Lagos, Nigeria, the masks and other sculptures in the exhibition—such as architectural elements from palaces and shrine complexes and objects made for a European clientele—present a nuanced account of the artist’s 50-year career. A selection of textiles, beadwork, metalwork, and ceramics situates Bámigbóyè’s work within the broader scope of 20th-century Yorùbá creative expression.

Website

Image: E. H. Duckworth, Moshood Olúṣọmọ Bámigbóyè Holding a Portrait Bust. Ìlọfà, Kwara State, Nigeria, ca. 1940. Danford Collection of West African Art and Artefacts, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, BIRRC-D432-1. © Research and Cultural Collections, University of Birmingham

Powers Concealed: Egúngúns from Africa and America

Powers Concealed: Egúngúns from Africa and America opens 15 October 2022 at the North Carolina Museum of Art and runs through 26 February 2023. 

Despite the pressures of cataclysmic global change, masquerade remains one of the most impressive, prolific, and persistent aspects of African and diaspora artistic production today. Yet, few contemporary masquerades appear in museum galleries or collections. This exhibition examines one genre of masquerade known as egúngún and places a historic example created by a Yorùbá artist in the 1930s in conversation with two contemporary egúngúns by artists and communities in South Carolina (Oyotunji African Village) and Georgia (Atlanta-based artist Dr. Fahamu Pecou). Brought together for the first time, these three egúngún ensembles connect past with present, spiritual with tangible, and political with individual expression to show how one global masquerade phenomenon can be mobilized to make change, educate, and heal.

Organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art and generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the exhibition is curated by Dr. Amanda M. Maples, Curator of Global African Arts.

Website 

African Modernism in America

African Modernism in America, co-curated by Perrin M. Lathrop, Nikoo Paydar, and Jamaal B. Sheats, opens at Fisk University Galleries in Nashville, TN on October 7, 2022 before beginning its 2023–2024 tour to the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (St. Louis, MO), the Phillips Collection (Washington, DC), and the Taft Museum of Art (Cincinnati, OH). The exhibition, co-organized by Fisk University Galleries and the American Federation of Arts, examines the complex connections between modern African artists and American patrons, artists, and cultural organizations amid the interlocking histories of civil rights, decolonization, and the Cold War. Between 1947 and 1967, institutions such as the Harmon Foundation; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and historically Black colleges and universities collected and exhibited works by many of the most important African artists of the mid-twentieth century. The inventive and irrefutably contemporary nature of these artists’ paintings, sculptures, and works on paper defied typical Western narratives that relegated African art to a “primitive” past, and their presentation in the United States rooted the vital work firmly in the present for American audiences. 

Website

Image: Peter Clarke (1929–2014, South Africa). That Evening Sun Goes Down, 1960. Gouache on paper. Fisk University Galleries, Fisk University, Nashville, TN. Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1991.313. Funds for the conservation of That Evening Sun Goes Down were generously provided through a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project.

Create to Free Yourselves: Abraham Lincoln and the History of Freeing Slaves in America

Award-winning artist Georges Adéagbo (born in 1942 in Cotonou, Benin) is a master of site-specific installation, and he will be bringing his transformational art to President Lincoln’s Cottage in January of 2023 for a month-long special exhibition titled: Create to Free Yourselves: Abraham Lincoln and the History of Freeing Slaves in America.

Adéagbo has long been personally intrigued by President Lincoln as an icon of emancipation, and this project will explore Lincoln’s legacy of liberation and creativity. The objects in the exhibit—including books, newspapers, handwritten notes, and artwork created by a team of artists in Benin--have relationships with one another, with their creators, and with the space itself. This intersection of relationships becomes the fertile ground for Adéagbo’s unique messaging. The objects themselves cannot be understood outside of this web of meaning, a web that redefines the space and transforms it into a work of art. This process becomes an act of artistic self-liberation.

Notions of identity, African Diasporan heritage, and self-reflection are integral to Adéagbo’s work, which will contribute to a deepening and evolving understanding of place at this important site.

Exhibit opening 17 January 2023

Website

Image Credit: Stephan Koehler

Lhola Amira: Facing the Future 

Opening December 17, 2022, Lhola Amira: Facing the Future launches the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s new African art program, foregrounding the permanent collection as a site of exploration for the evolving nature of African arts and their meanings today. Helmed by Natasha Becker, inaugural curator of African art, the program features contemporary artists whose work draws on and engages the artistic and cultural traditions of Africa. First to present, Lhola Amira (b.1984, Gugulethu, South Africa) embodies South African Nguni spiritual practices in THEIR life and work, emphasizing the power of remembering ancestors. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States and brings together Amira’s new "Philisa: Zinza Moya" —or portal for spiritual reflection and connection— and THEIR single-channel video projection exploring indigenous forms of healing within the African diaspora, "IRMANDADE: The Shape of Water in Pindorama" (2018–2020). Created in response to the permanent collection’s ancestor sculptures, Amira’s Philisa installation or “Constellation” Zinza Moya invites viewers to “be at rest with spirit.” 

Image: Lhola Amira, Still image from the film IRMANDADE: The Shape of Water in Pindorama, 2018-2022. Video HD single-channel with sound. Courtesy of the artist and SMAC gallery. 

The Language of Beauty in African Art

The Language of Beauty in African Art probes indigenous aesthetic evaluations of historical African arts through the languages and perspectives of their makers, patrons, and users. By exploring various African words for "beauty" and "ugliness" associated with a stunning range of artworks, visitors discover how nineteenth and twentieth-century sub-Saharan African perceptions of what was considered attractive and unappealing typically extended beyond visual appearance to have important moral connotations. Drawing from public and private collections around the world, the exhibition underscores Africa's cultural diversity by presenting more than 250 objects stemming from about sixty-five cultures. Equally, it points to common threads that connect the arts of the Bamana in Mali to the arts of the Zulu in South Africa. Curated by Constantine Petridis, this impressive gathering of captivating masks, powerful figures, and exquisite prestige objects is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from November 20, 2022 through February 27, 2023.

Website

Publication

Image: Eastern Pende; Democratic Republic of the Congo. Female Mask (Kambanda). Museum Rietberg, Zurich.

Workshops, Symposia, and Lectures

African Photography: The Ethics of Looking and Collecting in an Age of Restitution 

Friday, 11 November 2022 | Online Symposium | 9am–4pm ET

Since the 1990s, exhibitions of African photographers such as Seydou Keïta have raised questions about the relationship of ownership to authorship, visibility to privacy. Concerns about the ethics of looking and collecting have grown more urgent with recent debates about the restitution of African cultural heritage. 

This online symposium draws together scholars, artists, and curators who explore the ethics of working with photographs and methods to decolonize the medium, and its histories. 

What rights do photographers have? In today's age of hypervisibility, can sitters claim their "right to opacity," to use Édouard Glissant's term? What is the future of collecting and curating photographs that originate in family and colonial archives on the continent? Can viewers embody “the active struggle of looking with,” in Tina Campt’s words––rather than observe passively––and can this engender new ways of seeing?  

Organized by Z.S. Strother (Columbia University) and Giulia Paoletti (University of Virginia)

Register here

Image: Self-Portrait of Macky Kane and Fatou Thioune, Saint Louis (Senegal), 1941, scan from gelatin negative, 9x13cm. Courtesy of Linguere Fatou Fall and Revue Noire.

Lectures by Samuel Fosso

The North Carolina Museum of Art, the Department of Art and Art History at UNC Chapel Hill, 21C Museum Hotel, and Click! Photography Festival are pleased to announce two conversational guest lectures with renowned photographer Samuel Fosso (b. 1962, Cameroon and Central African Republic). Working between photography, self-portraiture, and performance, Samuel Fosso’s work occupies a central position in the international contemporary art world.

Member and Curator Dr. Amanda M. Maples will introduce Fosso and celebrate the recent acquisition of four of the artist's photographs into the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art and UNC's Ackland Art Museum. Fosso's lecture will also kick off the month-long Click! Photography Festival as the keynote lecture.

• SUNDAY, 2 OCTOBER, 4 PM (EST), 21C Museum Hotel, Durham, NC (Cocktail hour to follow)
• MONDAY, 3 OCTOBER, 6 PM (EST), UNC Hanes Art Center Auditorium

Register for the 21C event here

Website 

Image: "Self-Portrait (SM 6), from the series 70s Life Styles, 1973-1978, printed 2010. Gelatin silver print on archival paper. North Carolina Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the Friends of Photography Fund, 2019.15.2.

Jobs, Fellowships, & Internships

Open Rank (Assistant or Associate Professor), Fashion Institute of Technology 

The History of Art Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology (New York, NY) seeks a historian of African Art and visual culture who will teach innovative historical surveys of ancient to contemporary African art and develop more specialized courses. 

The successful candidate will contribute to the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences minors, which include African American and Africana Studies and Middle East and North African Studies, and contribute to the department, School, and College and beyond the classroom through committee and college-wide service, engaging in scholarly activities through conference presentations and publications, and demonstrate professional accomplishments in the discipline. The successful candidate will demonstrate familiarity with best-teaching practices including pedagogical innovation, inclusive strategies, and teaching pedagogy that incorporates new technologies. 

This faculty position will begin in Fall 2023. Review of applications will commence on 1 October 2022 and continue until the position is filled. The salary and appointment rank will be based on education level and cumulative experience. Please note a background check is required for appointment to this position. Open Rank (Assistant or Associate Professor)

If you have any questions, please contact the search committee chair: Professor Kyunghee Pyun with the subject line "African Art Inquiry."

Website 

Assistant Professor in African and/or African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture, The Ohio State University

The Department of History of Art at The Ohio State University invites applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor in African and/or African Diaspora art history and visual culture. The historical period and geographic area of the position are open and could include scholars working on Africa, the Caribbean, South or Central America, or the United States (as well as other global Black communities) in the premodern or contemporary world. 

A complete application consists of a cover letter addressing your research and teaching agenda, a curriculum vitae, a diversity statement, a writing sample, and three letters of reference. The diversity statement should articulate your demonstrated commitments and capacities to contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion through research, teaching, mentoring, and/or outreach and engagement. 

and will continue until the position is filled. 

Inquiries may be directed to the search committee chair, Professor Karl Whittington

Review of applications will begin on 15 October 2022

Apply at Academic Jobs Online

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Smarthistory

Smarthistory is seeking applications for an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow to develop global art history content. This is a one-year full-time position. Applicants will have a Ph.D. in art history (within the last two years) as well as teaching experience. The position is fully remote, with a salary of $55K (with health care and retirement match included). 

Deadline 15 October 2022

Website 

Junior Curator (f/m/d) for the Africa department, Linden-Museum Stuttgart

The Linden-Museum Stuttgart (Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde) is looking for a full-time (100%) junior curator at the next possible date. The position is limited to two years and will be graded in pay group 13 of the current collective agreement for the Federal States in Germany (TV-L).

The junior curator supports the senior curator in representing the Africa department in scientific and organizational matters. This includes, among other things, the further research of the Africa collections as well as the initiation and implementation of cooperations with external partners.

For the full job posting including required profile, tasks, and benefits, visit this website 

Please email your application documents preferably in digital form (one PDF file with max. 5 MB) by 6 November 2022 at the latest. Interviews are planned to be held at the Linden-Museum on 15 November 2022.

Deadline 6 November 2022

Perspectives on Indigenous Language Films in the Global South (A Book Project) 

Filmmaking is a development medium that can be used in preserving and archiving, promoting, and projecting indigenous languages, cultures, heritages, and mores of indigenous peoples tucked away in the ‘peripheries’ of 21st-century global cinema. It is a window to indigenous cultures and values, which help to shape the consciousness of millions of people in the age of ICTs. Essays should be in 12-point Times New Roman and 7th ed. of APA referencing should be used.

CFP link

Abstract due 12 November 2022, Full papers due 9 March 2023 to the following contacts:

Book Editors

Osakue Stevenson Omoera, PhD

Faculty of Humanities, Federal University Otuoke, Bayelsa State, Nigeria

Email 1; Email 2 

ORCID 

Francoise Ugochukwu, PhD

Research Fellow, Open University (UK)

Email

ORCID 

Calls for Participants

Peace Corps Research Project

Former members of the US Peace Corps who were based in sub-Saharan Africa are sought for participation in a new research project. Persons who acquired artworks during this time––be it by purchase, personal commission, gift, barter, etc––are of particular interest to the study. Should you be willing to be interviewed or would like to learn more, please contact the project leader Sarah Bevin for more information.

Kofi Cole Images in Context

250+ Kofi Cole miniatures live somewhere out there in the world. If you own one or more Kofi, Herbert M. (Skip) Cole (aka Kofi) asks owners––if they have not already done so––to send him a camera shot or two of your Kofi carving in situ, as it/they live in your home or office. Kindly send jpegs here. Thanks!!

Image: The late Willy Mestach in his Brussels studio/home with his Kofi Cole mini Ngata coffin; the original coffin is 100 inches high.

REVISED/REVIVED TEXTBOOK: Reviewers needed

The long-awaited 3rd edition of A History of Art in Africa is under contract with University of Michigan Publications for a planned launch in 2023. The revision is being prepared by Monica Blackmun Visonà, with the assistance of Robin Poynor and the support of their co-authors. It will be available online for free, as an open-access publication accessible worldwide, but can also be purchased (in printed form or as an e-book) from Maize Books. Although the text is still organized geographically, each chapter is now divided into uniform chronological sections that will allow readers to compare arts created across the continent during a single time period. Sections on cross-cultural thematic comparisons will be retained, but works by artists of the African Diaspora are now placed beside the artworks of the continent which inspired them. Additional sections feature artworks that document the global influence of Africans and African ideas.

Members of ACASA will be asked to review chapters (and portions of chapters) so that this edition may reflect the last twenty years of scholarship in our field.  

For information, queries, and suggestions, please contact Prof. Visonà

Research query: Inter-iconicities

If anyone is interested in the “inter-iconicities” (after Jean Pirotte’s neologism) of earlier or contemporary Christian arts of sub-Saharan Africa, let’s brainstorm! My specific attraction is to a very small (known) number of Madonna figures from southeastern DRC realized in a blend of Luba-influenced and European styles. Having been preoccupied with the topic for a year now, I am familiar with obvious cases (e.g. Kongo, Makonde, Yoruba) and pertinent literature. I would be happy to share images and references I have amassed in exchange for learning about your own exploration of such topics. 

Allen F. Roberts

Emeritus Distinguished Professor of World Arts and Cultures, UCLA

Image: Madonna figure blending Luba and European aesthetics, c.1930, Mpala DRC. Photo Bryan Reeves with permission.

Calls for Applications – Funding

Call for Applications - African Critical Inquiry Programme - Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards - For African Students in South African Ph.D. Programmes

Applications will open on 1 November for the African Critical Inquiry Programme’s 2023 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards to support African doctoral students in humanities and humanistic social sciences at South African universities conducting relevant dissertation research. ACIP seeks to advance inquiry and debate about the roles and practice of public culture, public cultural institutions, and public scholarship in shaping identities and society in Africa. Ivan Karp Awards are open to African postgraduate students registered in South African PhD programmes working on topics related to ACIP's focus. Maximum award ZAR 50,000.

For full information see ACIP Opportunities

ACIP is a partnership between the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of Western Cape and Laney Graduate School of Emory University

Applications due 1 May 2023

Website

Call For Proposals to Organize A Workshop - African Critical Inquiry Programme

The African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) invites proposals from scholars and/or practitioners in public cultural institutions in South Africa to organize a workshop in 2024. ACIP seeks to advance inquiry and debate about the roles and practice of public culture, public cultural institutions, and public scholarship in shaping identities and society in Africa. Applications may be submitted by experienced scholars and cultural practitioners at universities, museums, and other cultural organizations in South Africa who want to create or reinvigorate interdisciplinary, cross-institutional engagement and understanding and are committed to training future scholar-practitioners. Maximum award ZAR 75,000.

For full information, see ACIP Opportunities

ACIP is a partnership of Centre for Humanities Research at University of Western Cape and Laney Graduate School of Emory University.

Deadline Monday 1 May 2023

The African Critical Inquiry Programme has named Min’enhle Ncube as a recipient of a 2022 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Award. Ncube, a Zimbabwean student in Social Anthropology, is doing her PhD at the University of Cape Town. Support from ACIP’s Ivan Karp Awards will allow Ncube to conduct fieldwork in Zambia for her project Mapping the Ethics of Care Associated with Artificial Intelligence Technologies in Healthcare Infrastructures in Zambia.

Website 

Facebook 

The African Critical Inquiry Programme has named Suzana Sousa as a recipient of a 2022 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Award. Sousa is an Angolan student in History and a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape. Sousa’s Ivan Karp award will support her research at Angolan museums for her project “Angola Avante?” Making and Contesting Political Narratives of the Nation through Art and Visual Culture. 

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The African Critical Inquiry Programme has named Vanessa Chenas a recipient of a 2022 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Award. Chen, a South African student in the Department of Historical Studies is pursuing her PhD at the University of Cape Town. With support from ACIP’s Ivan Karp Awards Chen will work in Dutch archives for her dissertation, Collecting and Convening the Visual and Material Cultural History of Chinese Convicts, Exiles and “Free Blacks” at the Cape (circa 1654-1838).

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The article "Waswad the Reanimator" by Carol Boram-Hays will be published in the November issue of Nka Magazine.

Cécile Fromont has been promoted to the rank of Full Professor of the History of Art at Yale. 

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Toyin Akinde has had several publications in 2021/2022

• Akinde T. E. 2021. Cobclay Test Viability and Introduction as Clay Body. IJPSAT: International Journal of Progressive Sciences and Technology. 29(2), 587-602. ISSN: 2509-0119.
• Akinde T. E. 2021. Adeta Alamoyo Algorithmic Wares Firing from Wastes. IJPSAT: International Journal of Progressive Sciences and Technology. 30(1), 587-602. ISSN: 2509-0119.
• Akinde T. E. 2022. Artistic Visualization of Rukeme Ufoma Noserime's Repertoire. Art and Design. ITS: International Technology and Science. 5(5), 45-55. ISSN: 2617-9938.
• Akinde T. E. 2022. Redefining Frances Benjamin Johnston's ""Self Portrait"" Allegory in Potteryscape. IJPSAT: International Journal of Progressive Sciences and Technology. 33(2), 202-209. ISSN: 2509-0119."

Report on the 2022 Akwambo Festival

THE SOCIO-CULTURAL ASPECTS OF “AKWAMBO” FESTIVAL OF AJUMAKO MANDO 

Akwambo festival is celebrated in the Central Region of Ghana. This year’s Akwambo festival held at Mando, a predominant farming community, located in the Ajumako Traditional Area, Central Region, commenced on 2nd Tuesday 2022, amidst drumming and dancing as well as firing of musketry. The Chief of Mando summoned his elders and sub-chiefs to the Palace, and together poured libation to invoke the ancestral spirits of the land, for a successful festival. The word “AKWAMBO” literally means “clearing of path” in the Akan language, and it is a week-long celebration, which brings the natives across the length and breadth of Ghana, even those living abroad and Tourists. The Akwambo was first observed in Mando, by their immigrant ancestors to the township, whose main objective was to celebrate their arrival at the present settlement, now known as Mando. The Akwambo festival was climaxed with a colorful durbar on Saturday, 6th, September 2022, the Chief (Odikro), Queen-mothers and sub-chiefs arrived at the durbar grounds adorned in beautiful Kente Cloth and gold ornaments depicting royalty at its finest elements.

Gifty Yaa Asantewaa Glime, PhD. Ghana

Remembrances

Amahigueré Dolo (1955–2022)

We remember artist Amahigueré Dolo who passed away on 21 August 2022. Born in Sangha Gogoli, Mali, he is best known for his sinuous wood sculptures that were motivated by his Dogon heritage. He also worked in clay, bronze, and drawings on repurposed sacks.

    Select residencies and exhibitions include Mali's National Museum, London’s 1:54 African Art Fair, Galerie L'Espal (Le Mans), Pavillon Delouvrier (Paris), Château du Grand Jardin (Joinville), L’H du Siege (Valenciennes), Fondation Jean-Paul Blachère (Apt), and Centre d'Art La Chapelle Jeanne D'Arc (Thouars). He was the first African sculptor to permanently install his work in the Tuileries Garden, Paris.

      Beloved by all, Dolo was always collaborating with other artists including Miquel Barceló, Abdoulaye Konaté, Alain Kirili, Janet Goldner, Jacques Sarasin, Souleymane Ouologuem, and Ina and Yassa Saye of Tireli.

      He was a principal figure in Jessica Hurd’s doctoral dissertation. In 2017, Dolo’s important, 86-piece sculptural installation Adouron Bew (“Components of the World”) was featured at the Menil Collection (Houston). It later graced the Patterson-Appleton Arts Center (Denton, TX) and Southern University Museum of Art (Shreveport). "

Image: Artist Amahiguéré Dolo, Ogobagna Festival in Bamako, Mali. 

Ijeoma Uche-Okeke (1972–2022)

Ijeoma Uche-Okeke passed on 1 September 2022. We will remember her forever. Ijeoma was a dedicated leader in the arts and culture sector for over 15 years. In South Africa, she served as a Manager at the Visual Arts Network of South Africa and at Gallery MOMO, and as a Project Coordinator at !Kauru Contemporary Art Project where she managed a range of local, regional, and international artistic programs. Up until her death, Ijeoma Loren Uche-Okeke was the Chief Executive Officer of the Asele Institute, a cultural institution founded by her late father, master artist, and scholar, Uche Okeke, in Nimo, Anambra state, Nigeria in 1958. The Asele Institute houses an important repository and collection of contemporary African art. Ijeoma assumed her position at Asele in 2019 developing the organization’s board, exhibitions, and programs. Her drive and determination in preserving her father’s legacy and championing African artists by further developing Asele into a global institution were groundbreaking. In 2019, she co-edited the re-launch of Uche Okeke’s Art in Development – A Nigerian Perspective published by iwalewabooks. She also co-curated a major exhibition at Iwalewahaus We will now go to Kpaaza featuring selected works of Uche Okeke, which opened in 2022. 

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Image: Ijeoma Uche-Okeke. Behind her are artworks by her parents Uche & Ego Okeke. Photograph by Africa-Related Inc.

With global membership, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) promotes greater understanding of African material and expressive culture in all its many forms, and encourages contact and collaboration with African and Diaspora artists and scholars.



ACASA is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.