Since the start of their project in September 2018, the Making African Art team has been exploring the interplay of various historical events in the 1960s that influenced the transformation of the canon of African art and the establishment of African art history as an academic discipline. During the fall semester, they investigated the importance of Pan-African festivals, and the founding of national museums and art schools in a number of African countries. The team hosted three scholars of African art history, Professor Chris Steiner (Connecticut College), Professor Sylvester Ogbechie (University of California-Santa Barbara) and Curator Paul Davis (The Menil Collection), who helped contextualize the ways in which art was deployed in the forging of national identities.To further enhance the collaborative nature of their project, the team has developed a project websiteto encourage requests from interested scholars and institutions.
Photo: The Making African Art team. From left to right: Traci Lombre, Evan Binkley, Laura De Becker, Raymond Silverman, Kelly Askew, and Sandra Nwogu. Not pictured: Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo