Ghana 57: African Art After Independence (exhibition and book)
In 1957, Ghana became the first African country to declare independence from its colonizers, providing a blueprint for similar movements across the continent. By 1970, forty-five of today’s fifty-four African states had established their independence. These struggles for independence coincided with artistic revolutions. Everywhere, artists began rethinking their relationships to new nation states, to the African continent, and to the world at large, a world fractured by the Cold War into socialist and capitalist blocs.
The exhibition, and the scholarly publication that will accompany it, explore the pivotal role played by Ghana—its artists, activists, political leaders, and their interlocutors—in the continental story of the making of African art in the wake of Independence. In addition to examining the development of postcolonial national arts infrastructures and movements in Ghana and elsewhere on the African continent, the project also addresses the interactions of African artists, educators, and political leaders with American actors and institutions in the context of Cold War-era international diplomacy and pan-Africanist movements on both sides of the Atlantic.
Creating Sacred Space in the Ethiopian Diaspora (research)
Paintings depicting the history of Christianity, including the lives of Jesus, Mary and myriad saints, are presented on the interior walls of Ethiopian Orthodox churches. Indeed, this imagery plays a vital role in sustaining the Orthodox faith. In the late 1970s, after the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians fled the totalitarian regime of the Derg and a bloody civil war that lasted until 1991. Many of these Ethiopians found their way to the United States where they established communities in cities across the country, including Greater Washington, DC, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Seattle. In each, churches were created serving as important religious and social centers of the new communities. Most of the immigrants came with limited financial resources and therefore did not have the means to build new churches, instead they purchased or rented already existing buildings that they converted into churches. Mural paintings have played a central role in establishing these sacred spaces.
Creating Sacred Space in the Ethiopian Diaspora seeks to document how religious imagery is used to articulate these vital spaces. A number of fundamental questions frame the project. How are paintings deployed in these Ethiopian Orthodox churches in these communities. How are the artists who produce paintings for these churches selected? Who is responsible for selecting them? Who determines the subjects represented in the paintings? Who determines their placement in the church? Who pays for them? How are they used in the church? Who designs the spaces (churches) in which the paintings are displayed, and what is the nature of the design process? Is there anything distinctive about practices associated with commissioning and deploying paintings in diaspora Ethiopian Orthodox churches relative to churches in Ethiopia?
The Peace Corps and the Study of African Art (research)
In the 1960s the field of African art history, as practiced in the US, was established with the goal of attempting to understand African art on its own terms, as the product of specific African societies. The founding fathers of the new field of inquiry—Roy Sieber, Robert Thompson, and Douglas Fraser—cultivated a new approach that sought to examine the social, political, and religious contexts in which African art was made and used. The majority, an estimated 60% of the students with whom they worked in the late 1960s and 70s, were individuals who had recently returned from Africa having served in the Peace Corps. This phenomenon was paralleled in other disciplines, such as anthropology, history, and political science. Since then, there has been a tacit belief that this shared PC experience might have influenced how the first and second generations of African art specialists approached the study of African art and visual culture. Interestingly, despite its potential significance, no one has seriously interrogated this hypothesis. Did the Peace Corps play a role in shaping the burgeoning field of African art history?
I am currently conducting interviews with close to 20 colleagues in the field of African art (academics, curators, dealers, and collectors) who served as Peace Corps Volunteers in Africa during this formative period to determine whether their experiences did in fact influence how they documented and analyzed the visual practices that chose to study in Africa. The transcribed interviews will constitute a formal archive, an important resource for those interested in the history of the field of African art history.
Nkwantananso: A Culture Centre for Techiman (community engaged research)
Techiman is the contemporary capital of the historic Bono state, founded in the fourteenth century and reputed to be the first centralized polity in the region. Located in central Ghana, it sits at the crossroads of major roads leading both north/south, and east/west. It is the site of one of the largest agricultural markets in the subregion. In the late 1990s the community decided to build its first cultural center. As a scholar of Bono cultural history who has worked in Techiman since 1979, I was asked in 2002 by the Traditional Council of Chiefs to assist in conceptualizing and building the center. It was named Nkwantananso, “place at the crossroads.” Though a detailed strategic plan for Nkwantananso has been developed, the key actors have been unable to implement the plan. Twenty years later, the cultural center still is not built. Nevertheless, the process of working with chiefs, municipal officials, and the citizens of Techiman has yielded and continues to yield important insights into the social and political dynamics of heritage work in a contemporary Ghanaian community. It also has provided opportunities for four different groups of graduate students from University of Michigan, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and University of Ghana to acquire first-hand experience working in and with a community to create a site and which culture, past and present, is preserved and performed.
