Winter 2023 Newsletter – Vol. 123 | |
President's Greeting
Dear ACASA Members,
Happy New Year to all. As I write this, we are in the process of conducting elections for three new board members. Ordinarily, this would have happened before the last ASA with the newly selected Vice-President/President-Elect being ratified at the business meeting, but as you well know, recent history has been tumultuous. As a result, we are conducting the elections a little behind schedule with the ratification of the board’s choice of Vice-President/President-Elect to take place via electronic means. We look forward to welcoming our new board members soon and getting back on schedule with all our functions thereafter.
In November, I attended the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, which is our parent organization. I don’t have hard numbers, but my impression was that the conference was smaller than in the past. Certainly, there were fewer panels and papers related to African art, and unfortunately ACASA did not sponsor a panel as is the norm. I must assume that we are all still getting back into the habit of participating in person at conferences again, and hope that by next year we will have fully bounced back.
Coming up soon in February, ACASA is sponsoring a panel at the College Art Association Annual Conference in New York. We are excited that six of the eight participants of this panel are based in Africa. Increased inclusion of and participation by members on the continent has been a goal of our organization. Given the added expenses for these members to participate and our desire to help level the playing field, the board elected to provide small $500 travel grants for those panel participants based in Africa. This is a one-time act and reflective of the fact that we are currently in a relatively strong financial situation. This act does, however, reflect a certain intention that could be made more regular given adequate financial support.
Speaking of financial support, I would like to thank the two members who responded to our New Year Fundraising Campaign with contributions. Of course, those who wish to contribute to any of our several funds may always do so via our website.
Our treasurer Kris Juncker has provided me with a brief synopsis of recent financial affairs. In December we welcomed 14 new members and added two lifetime memberships. Caroline Bastian has worked on our membership rolls to consolidate those members with double (or triple) profiles to just one. We have a total of 1208 current members throughout Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas, with 428 of those in the US and Europe.
Looking forward, we are beginning the planning process for the next Triennial to be held in Chicago in summer 2024. I will be meeting with DePaul University’s conference services at the end of January to survey the facilities, ascertain capabilities for remote/hybrid participation, and set dates for the conference. We will soon thereafter begin constituting the various planning and prize committees, so please keep your eyes peeled for the calls and we hope you will consider contributing to the process by volunteering to serve on these committees.
Thanks,
Mark Dike DeLancey
President
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DEADLINE: 15 May 2023
(to be published late May/early June)
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Portfolio: Carved Designs, Thresholds, and Indian Ocean Visual Affinities: The Case of Monkey Heads and Tolla
This Portfolio feature essay by Janet Marion Purdy is her first peer-reviewed publication about Zanzibar doors, stemming from extensive multi-sited fieldwork in support of her 2020 dissertation, which centers on three case studies of iconic carved nineteenth-century Zanzibar doors and Swahili artisans. The focus on visual imaginaries and intangible affinities in this and upcoming publications about ornamental doors, gateways, and portals of the Indian Ocean world supports ongoing efforts to shift studies of the arts of Africa beyond the physical borders of the continent and to reflect the reality of global integrations, especially through the lens of the East African diaspora.
Neelima Jeychandran and Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François edited this special issue of Verge: Studies in Global Asias: Indian Ocean Studies, African-Asian Affinities, published by University of Minnesota Press. Verge: Studies in Global Asias, vol. 8 no. 1, 2022, p. 46-68. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/vrg.2022.0000.
Read
Image: cover of Verge: Studies in Global Asias: Indian Ocean Studies, African-Asian Affinities vol. 8, no. 1, 2022 © University of Minnesota Press
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Georges Adéagbo à l'école de Ernest Barlach, le sculpteur
The Ernst Barlach Haus Hamburg published a stunning catalogue on occasion of Georges Adéagbo's solo exhibition "A l'école de Ernest Barlach, le sculpteur" with essays by Karsten Müller, (Ed.) Stephan Köhler (ACASA Member) and Petra Lange Berndt in English, German and French 56 colorplates held loosely to take out.
size 36 x 27 cm. € 29,00 and signed special edition 25 copies € 75,00 plus shipment. ISBN978-3-98741-024-6
Order your copy
Website
Image: the catalogue with 56 colorplates is a book to play with.
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Create to Free Yourselves: Georges Adéagbo Installation
Award-winning sculptor and found-object artist Georges Adéagbo (born in 1942 in Cotonou, Benin) is a virtuoso of site-specific installation, and he will be bringing his transformational art to President Lincoln’s Cottage in January 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. Curated by Michael Mason Director of Lincoln's Cottage and Stephan Köhler (ACASA Member)
Website
Image: Georges Adéagbo installs his new site-specific installation at President Lincoln Cottage. Photo: Stephan Köhler
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Art, Honor, and Ridicule: Fante Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana
The Fowler Museum at UCLA presents “Art, Honor, and Ridicule: Fante Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana” on view Oct. 23, 2022–Feb. 12, 2023. Colorful and conceptually layered, the flags are insignia for the historical and still thriving military companies of Fante states in southern Ghana. They are adorned with vivid appliqué images that convey narratives of pride, record past events, visualize proverbial wisdom, and send defiant messages to enemies, and are paraded by the companies to celebrate their strength and preserve the memory of their role as community defendants.
The exhibition is co-curated by Silvia Forni, senior curator of global Africa, Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, and Erica P. Jones, Fowler curator of African arts, and features flags drawn exclusively from the Fowler collection. This presentation is based on the 2016 ROM exhibition of the same name, which focused on flags from ROM and was curated by Forni and Doran H. Ross, former director of the Fowler Museum. In 2017, a publication produced in cooperation between the two museums was published by ROM.
Website
Image: Kobina Badowah (Fante peoples, Ghana), Kormantse workshop, Nkum No. 2 Company Kormantse, asafo flag, c. 1981; cotton, applique, embroidery; Fowler Museum at UCLA, X86.1251; Gift of Doran H. Ross
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Tingatinga
The Fowler Museum at UCLA presented Tingatinga on view Sep. 25, 2022–Jan. 8, 2023. This exhibition showcased a series of animal paintings made by members of the Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society in the 1990s. The Tingatinga style began with Tanzanian painter Edward Saidi (E.S.) Tingatinga (b. Dar es Salaam, 1939; d. 1972). His paintings are characterized by flat, stylized animal depictions clearly outlined against a monochrome ground. Toward the end of his short life, Tingatinga took on apprentices. A cohort of his former students continues to train students and keep alive his distinctive style.
Tingatinga is organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA and curated by Erica P. Jones, curator of African arts.
Website
Image: Abdul Amonde Mkura, (b. 1954, Tanzania), painting, c. 1999; pigment, cotton cloth; Fowler Museum at UCLA, X2021.2.18; Gift of Betsy Quick in honor of Doran H. Ross
| | Workshops, Symposia, and Lectures | | |
Save the Date: Robert Farris Thompson Symposium, September 7–9, 2023
Please save the date! The History of Art department at Yale is planning a symposium in memory of Robert Farris Thompson (1932-2021) on September 7–9, 2023 to take place in New Haven, Connecticut. Inspired by Thompson’s scholarly, pedagogical, and curatorial innovations, and wishing to critically consider their continued impact, the event will gather thinkers, teachers, artists, and museum practitioners to reflect on present and future paths for boundary-pushing scholarly, museographic, and pedagogical approaches to African and Afro-diasporic expressive cultures.
Details and program forthcoming. In the meantime, you may contact Cécile Fromont with any questions.
| | Calls for Papers, Chapters, & Presentations | | |
CFP Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensi
The peer-reviewed journal Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis calls for papers to be published in the 107th volume, ed. by Karina Simonson (ACASA member) "Art beyond the Politics: Africa and the ‘Other’ Europe during the Cold War" at the beginning of 2024. The issue is devoted to transcontinental cultural relations, representations, and imaginations that occurred and developed between the countries of Africa and Eastern and Central Europe during the Cold War era.
This journal issue aims to fill the lacuna of knowledge about both the actual and imaginary cultural links between Central-Eastern Europe and the African continent during the Cold War era. It proposes a reconsideration of whether and to what extent artistic exchanges between these non-Western contexts might escape historically developed power relations between Europe and Africa and its role in postcolonial and decolonial debates.
Deadline: Please email short abstracts for articles (up to 300 words) and authors’ bios (up to 200 words) by 30 January 2023 to Karina Simonson
The authors of selected (and not selected) papers will be informed by 10 February 2023. The deadline for full papers is 30 May 2023.
Website
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Reminder: African Critical Inquiry Programme, Call for Proposals to Organise a Workshop
The African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) invites proposals from scholars and/or practitioners in public cultural institutions in South Africa to organise 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
Deadline: Monday, 1 May 2023
| | 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
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Vote! Research Project of the Year by Current Archaeology
Malika Kraamer writes "We got nominated for Research Project of the Year by Current Archaeology for research on 18th-century textile samples (including the oldest still existing and dated kente in the world) in the chest of the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, currently in Wisbech museum. It is probably the first time that West African textiles and Ghanaian/Togolese heritage features in this popular scientific journal, meaning it reaches a large audience of which many people are not familiar with any African art and heritage.
The project with the most votes wins. I managed to mobilize many in Ghana and Togo to vote, as people are excited about this find."
Voting Link (Look for Research Project of the Year, entry: From Africa to Wisbech: analyzing 18th-century textiles in Thomas Clarkson’s campaign chest)
deadline 31 January 2023
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Fowler Museum Receives Mellon Foundation Grant
The Fowler Museum at UCLA was awarded a $400,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support a second phase of the Mellon-funded initiative Collaborative Interdisciplinary Research on African Collections at the Fowler Museum, bringing Mellon’s total financial commitment to one million dollars for the project since 2019. Beginning July 2022, the second three-year project continues its focus on a subset of African art from the Sir Henry Wellcome Collection, gifted to UCLA in 1965 by the Wellcome Trust in London.
The new phase of the project will pursue four goals:
- continuation of interdisciplinary research concerning provenance (history of ownership and movement)
- development and documentation of restitution protocols
- expansion of online open access to the Fowler’s collection of African arts to increase transparency
- development of exhibitions and publications that provide modeling for anti-colonial museum practices by engaging such topics as African art markets, collecting histories, materiality, and knowledge systems
The grant will fund two positions, a Mellon Curatorial Fellow and Collections Information Coordinator, both of whom joined the Fowler staff in 2019, at the start of the initiative.
Website
Image: Bird-shaped weight for measuring gold, before 1903 (X65.9519); Rifle-shaped weight for measuring gold, before 1903 (X65.9518); Sawfish-shaped weight for measuring gold, before 1904 (X65.9564); Weight for measuring gold, decorated with a swirl, before 1936 (X65.9381); All created by an unidentified artist (Akan, Ghana); all copper alloy; Fowler Museum at UCLA; Gift of the Wellcome Trust
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Jewel Fraser, an ACASA member, is sharing her project with the ACASA community. She says, "As a freelance writer, journalist, and podcast producer, I have produced some really worthwhile stories from the Caribbean that are simply left to gather cobwebs on corners of the Web. I would like to make available some of these stories, to which I own the copyright, for fan support on the platform featured in this announcement. This way I can encourage fans to make monetary contributions that will support my work as a freelance writer and producer of captivating but untold Caribbean stories.
If you love stories from and about the Caribbean, told by Caribbean people who know them best, please do follow my company, Triwindjana Audiotales, and its productions on this site. Your monetary contributions would likewise be of great help.”
Website
Cover for "Hewers of Wood" story. AI-generated image. © Jewel Fraser
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Malika Kraamer's book chapter related to research nominated for Current Archaeology's Project of the Year will be published in February 2023:
Kraamer, Malika (2023) "Abolitionism and Kente Cloth. Early Modern West African Textiles in Thomas Clarkson’s Chest." In-Between Textiles, 1400–1800. Weaving Subjectivities and Encounters. Edited by Beatriz Marín-Aguilera and Stefan Hanß. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Pp 137-160.
Purchase
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Toyin Akinde has had several publications in 2022
Eyinade A S, Akintonde M A, Akinde T E, Abiodun S O. 2022. "Prospecting Pressurized Kerosene Stream Burner for Bisque Firing in Nigerian Schools." SRJEL: Scientific Research Journal of Education and Literature. 2(4), 1-15. ISSN:2788-9521
Akinde T E, Tijani A, Akintonde M A, Eyinade A S. 2022. "Yoruba contemporary Gele: A Stylistic Appraisal." IJ-HUMASS: International Journal of Humanities, Management and Social Sciences. 5(2), 79-88
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Henry John Drewal keeps active during his "retry-ment." He is publishing an essay on the fabulous beadwork of Joyce J. Scott, an article on two African Diaspora art exhibitions he curated in 1975 and 1988 (Routledge––forthcoming), a review of an exhibition and its catalogue (African Arts––forthcoming), as well as consulting on a series of films, and giving a four-week course on African art and architecture in the British Virgin Islands.
Website
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| |  | Freida High Wasikhongo Tesfagiorgis, M.F.A., Ph.D., Professor Emerita, UW-Madison, contributed a short essay, "Imade-Ben Enwonwu," to the companion catalog, African Modernism in America, 1947-1967, ed. Dr. Perrin Lathrop, also curator with Dr. Nikoo Paydar and Associate Provost Jamaal Sheets, co-sponsored by Fisk University & American Federation of the Arts, Yale U. Press (2022). She is one of 40 individuals in the Dr. Charles Taylor Documentary Film, Leaders of Madison’s Black ‘Renaissance (2022). High/Tesfagiorgis is a 2022 Recipient of the Wisconsin Visual Art Achievement Award (Legacy/Lifetime Achievement Award). She is co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of the new Bronzeville Center for the Arts in Milwaukee, WI, and Chair of the Collections Committee. Finally, her painting, Hypericons: Homage to W.J.T. Mitchell (2007), is on the cover and in the book of Dr. Mitchell’s Metapictures: Images and the Discourse of Theory, just published in Chinese by the OCAT Institute in Beijing, China.
Image: Wisconsin Visual Arts Legacy Award, photo by Gebre Tesfagiorgis
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| | | Dr. Silvia Forni joined the Fowler Museum at UCLA as the Shirley & Ralph Shapiro Director on December 1, 2022. Forni comes to the Fowler after an accomplished tenure at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, where she was senior curator of global Africa and deputy vice president of the museum’s department of art & culture. At ROM, Forni oversaw the institution’s large African collection and was responsible for the museum’s permanent and rotating display of African artworks. Forni’s research focuses on the significance of art both in local contexts and as part of exchange networks. She is interested in the tensions, dynamics, and feedback that inspire contemporary creators in Africa and beyond and the way art challenges how the art of the so-called Global South has been constructed in the Western imagination. Alongside her curatorial duties Dr. Forni has also initiated and contributed to many institutional conversations aimed to interrogate and dismantle the colonial legacies embedded in institutional practices and structures and seek ways to ground the museum’s impact and relevancy on more equitable premises.
Website
Image: Silvia Forni, photo: Saty + Pratha. © Royal Ontario Museum, 2022.
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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.
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