The Arts Council of the African Studies Association 14th Triennial Symposium
by Carol Brown
I recently attended the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) 14th Triennale Symposium in Gainesville, Florida. This is an active association based in the USA whose academic membership studies African arts and material culture. Conversations with delegates, many of whom remember the first symposium held in 1968, reveal that the emphasis has changed from a strong interest in what was called 'tribal arts' of Africa to discussions of contemporary African and diasporic artists and museums.
This was reinforced in the first day which was called 'Museum Day' and the discussions that day were animated and controversial and set a high tone for the rest of the symposium.
As a South African participant I must confess to a feeling of envy as I listened to my American colleagues discuss the landmark new museum buildings which had recently been constructed, or were on the drawing board, to show African art. The High Museum in Atlanta, which I visited last year, recently underwent a large renovation designed by Renzo Piano, architect of the Pompidou Centre. This had previously been an elegant, contemporary building by Richard Meier which had a human scale but now it is a spectacular edifice and icon of the city. Curator of African Art, Carol Thompson (who together with Susan Cooksey of the Harn Museum organised the Museum Day) did add the fact that the African Art section was still situated in what was effectively the basement.
This idea of Africa being a dark space was prevalent in discussions of the new Quai Branly museum in Paris which ended the day. Other exciting developments included the new Museum for African Art which is being constructed in one of the most valued real estate locations in the world - New York's Fifth Avenue, opposite Central Park. It will include a tower of 115 luxury apartments above the museum and cost $80 million. Chief Curator Enid Schildkrout whetted our appetite for this forthcoming attraction scheduled for 2009. The Museum was started by Susan Vogel in 1984 in Soho and is famous for its groundbreaking exhibitions which changed the world's perceptions of African art and its display. It is currently without a building although it still has an active curatorial programme organising off-site exhibitions. This in itself is inspirational to many South African Museums which lack space and resources.
Another highlight was hearing Polly Nooter Roberts' and Marla Berns' papers about their latest display at the Fowler Museum at UCLA which shows the richness of their collections of non-Western art. 'Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives' features approximately 250 of the finest objects from their permanent collections in a long-term exhibition that celebrates the richness of world arts and considers the roles these works play in peoples' lives. These works are from Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas and date from the first millennium B.C.E. to the present. They also showed some of their past exhibitions, each more captivating than the last. This relatively small museum has an outstanding standard of display and scholarly research and produces a staggering amount of exhibitions of exceptional quality. Its position on the UCLA campus provides a significant resource for students as well.
At the end of the day a few hours were dedicated to the Quai Branly Museum in Paris which opened in June (see ArtThrob News archives). Atlanta-based architect Sabir Khan delivered the first paper, giving an overview of the work of its architect, Jean Nouvel and placed the museum in the context of his previous work, including the Cartier Centre and the Monde Arabe in Paris. He described the Quai Branly museum as being like a discotheque at 10am. After explaining that Nouvel sleeps all day and visits nightclubs at night and favours working from 10pm to 10am, one understands his fondness for the crepuscular.
A fascinating critique followed in Susan Vogel's paper where she showed a slide of the plans for Disney's Epcot Centre in the 1980s and drew our attention to the similarity in concept. She was enthusiastic about many aspects of this, including the fact that the space was respectful without being reverent, it has none of the hush of awe which museums normally have and you don't feel as though you are obliged to learn something. She also remarked that its display fitted well with the space of the internet which is made for short attention spans. The fresh, 'everyday' quality of the materials such as the asphalt flooring link it to the street and everyday life. However the downside is that by making Africa, and the other continents which it represents, like a mysterious jungle it perpetuates the idea of a 'dark continent'. She stated that it was, in short, a modern envelope with a message from the last century.
This day was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting and stimulating. There were many panels and papers which let to parallel sessions which always present a dilemma, given the little information in the conference brochures where abstracts can be deceptive. However I struck lucky in most of my choices and found one of the most interesting panels was one on ephemeral art. Discussions included papers on contemporary artists, traditional performance and the Senegalese Laboratoire Agit-Art as well. There was also a paper given by a conservator at the Smithsonian on the challenges of preserving ephemeral materials for posterity.
There were several discussions on artists' workshops and co-operatives and the issue of textbook production on contemporary African Art was also debated.
The keynote address was given by Okwui Enwezor who discussed what he described as 'the moving target' of contemporary art. He spoke about globalisation from the 1990s as a positive force and touched upon important exhibitions such as the African Biennales and the exhibition he curated, 'The Short Century'. He mentioned the politics of space, the need for the development of institutional capacity to bring in black artists and art administrators and the importance of the archive.
The Arnold Rubin Book Award winners are traditionally announced at this Triennial. This award acknowledges the best works on African art published in the last three years. I was privileged to be a judge on this panel and we had a difficult task choosing just two books out of 40, in two categories: a book by a single author and a book by two or more authors. The winners were:
In Senghor's Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960 - 1995 by Elizabeth Harney. This is a well-researched study of modern art in Senegal during 20 years of Lé;opold Senghor's presidency, the country's first president, philosopher, and one of the founders of the Negritude movement.
In the multiple author category, the winner was Beautiful Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics edited by Sarah Nuttall (Professor at Wits University). In this collection of essays, the editor and a variety of contemporary scholars and artists from Africa and the Diaspora such as London-based political scientist Françoise Vergès and South Africans William Kentridge, Mark Gevisser and Cheryl Ann Michael, reflect on related themes that have impacted their work.
I will be reviewing these books in a later edition of ArtThrob.
Finally, the most prestigious award for Lifetime Achievement was conferred upon Susan Vogel who, as discussed earlier, changed the way of displaying and looking upon African Art. Among her many achievements was the establishment of the Museum for African Art in New York in 1984 and the seminal exhibitions, 'Art/Artifact' and 'Africa Explores'. She was Director of the art museum at Yale, is currently Professor at Columbia University, New York and is enjoying success as a documentary film-maker. She is undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in the field of African art.
