African Arts articles from December 2002

African Arts archives from December 2002

The cultured body.
December 22, 2002... In October 2002 the University of Iowa hosted an international conference that demonstrated the rich potential of the body and its adornments as springboards for research into political, historical, economic, religious, and, of course,...

Museums and contemporary African art. (dialogue).
December 22, 2002... Some Questions for Curators The following exchange attempts to document the rapidly changing scenario of museum practices in exhibiting contemporary African art. I asked museum curators in Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles, Berlin, Vienna,...

Chokwe! Art and Initiation Among Chokwe and Related Peoples.(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... Edited by Manuel Jordan Prestel-Verlag, Munich, London, and New York, 1998. 192 pp., 100 color & 124 b/w illustrations, map, bibliography. $65 hardcover, $36 softcover. This collective volume appeared in conjunction with a traveling...

In memoriam.
December 22, 2002... Keith Nicklin (1946-2002) "Who was that Masked Man?" "No Condition Permanent," "A Great Tree Has Fallen," "A Legend in His Own Time"... Never easy to write an obituary. Perhaps one can for an elder--far harder for a mate. Who was...

Carved Ogboni figures from Abeokuta, Nigeria: Adugbologe who shines like the new moon. There is no place where he is not known on this earth.
December 22, 2002... Among the Yoruba peoples of southwestern Nigeria, the Ogboni society (called Osugbo in Ijebu (2)) is an important institution that fulfills a number of political, judicial, and spiritual functions. Before the era of colonialism, this council of...

Fante asafo flags of Abandze and Kormantze: a discourse between rivals.
December 22, 2002... Asafo companies originated several centuries ago among the Akan peoples of southern Ghana as military organizations. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century accounts by Muller (1662-1699, in Jones 1983), de Marees (1602), Ogilby (1987 [1670]),...

Robert Visser and his photographs from the Loango Coast.
December 22, 2002... The last decade has seen an enormous upswing of interest in historical photographs among ethnologists and historians. In many exhibitions and publications, scholars have raised questions about the value of colonial photographs as a source of...

A Saint in the City: Sufi arts of urban Senegal.
December 22, 2002... It's so hard to be a saint in the city. Bruce Springsteen "A Saint in the City" presents the visual culture of a dynamic religious movement known as the Mouride Way that is inspired by a Senegalese Sufi pacifist, poet, and saint named...

Katarikawe dreaming: notes on a retrospective. .
December 22, 2002... Bilder aus Traumen/Dreaming in Pictures: Jak Katarikawe was written for an exhibition of the same name that opened at Galerie 37, Museum der Weltkulturen, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (September 14, 2001-March 31, 2002). The show is scheduled to...

African Art reinstallation. (recent exhibitions).
December 22, 2002... University of Iowa Museum of Art Iowa City, Iowa A curator reinstalling a museum's permanent collection must consider two questions: first, how to impress regular visitors with a new display of familiar material, and second, how to wow...

Current events.
December 22, 2002... Information subject to change western states (by closing date) NSILA--EL CAMINO Jose Bedia and the Spirit's Path in Congo Art Through April 20 Cantor Center for Visual Arts Stanford University Stanford, CA ...

Makonde.(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... MAKONDE Jesper Kirknaes and Jorn Korn Rhodos, Copenhagen, 1999. 156 pp., 174 & 5 color photos, map. Kr 298 softcover. A HOST OF DEVILS The History and Context of the Making of Makonde Spirit Sculpture Zachary Kingdon Routledge, London and...

Ghana's Concert Party Theatre.(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... Catherine M. Cole Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2001. 196 pp., 24 b/w photos, 3 maps. $52.95 hardcover, $21.95 softcover. Catherine M. Cole's new book is an extensive overview of the history and development of the Ghanaian concert...

The Art Institute of Chicago.
December 22, 2002... The Art Institute of Chicago is a large and encyclopedic museum where mine is the only curatorial voice that prioritizes Africa in decision making. Indeed, you might say that that's what I get paid for. Other curators--we have more than...

Viennese Museums and Galleries.(Brief Article)
December 22, 2002... There have been few displays in Austria of contemporary African art in the last decade. I would mention two 1996 exhibitions, one dealing with artists from Africa and of African origin (Kunsthalle Krems), the other one a festival exhibition...

Museum der Weltkulturen, Frankfurt.
December 22, 2002... Question 1: The recent developments in the awareness and perception of contemporary African art has not changed the Museum der Weltkulturen's exhibition or collecting policy, which was established in 1991, before Galerie 37, the museum's venue...

National Museum of African Art.
December 22, 2002... Question 4: I think the best one can hope for is to work in multiple arenas so that the unique dynamics of any given situation might be better understood. I agree that the flip side of globalism is a continuing localism (Clifford, Enwezor, and...

Ethnologisches Museum Berlin.(Brief Article)
December 22, 2002... Over the last decades the acquisition policies of the African Department of this museum concentrated mainly on traditional African art. In the planned renovation of the permanent exhibition, which should be finished in five years, the focus...

UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.
December 22, 2002... The questions raised by Sidney Kasfir are of critical importance to the museum field, and the UCLA Fowler Museum is in a special position to address them. First of all, the Fowler has always been committed to presenting cultures in dynamic...

Wifredo Lam and The 1940s Paris Art Scene.
December 22, 2002... I wish to clarify some information concerning the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam in Bennetta Jules-Rosette's article "Musee Dapper: New Directions for a Postcolonial Museum" (Summer 2002). Caption 7 on page 25 states that Lam was part of the Parisian...