In August 2022, I traveled with University of Michigan Museum of Art colleagues, Laura De Becker and Ashley Miller, to Ghana. There we spent three weeks visiting with colleagues at the National Museum of Ghana, the KNUST Faculty of Art in Kumasi, and the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in Tamale to begin planning for Ghana 57: African Art After Independence (working title), an exhibition and book project that examines art making during Ghana’s aspirational and tumultuous post-independence era. The project has been conceived as a collaboration among Ghanaian and American curators that will culminate in an exhibition that will open in 2027 at the National Museum of Ghana in celebration of the 70th anniversary of Ghana’s independence, and then travel to several venues in Ghana, the United States and perhaps Europe. Highlights of the trip included meeting with members of the arts collective, blaxTARLINES, and visits to the studios of El Anatsui in Tema and Ibrahim Mahama (Red Clay) in Tamale.
