As African Art Thrives, Museums Grapple With Legacy of Colonialism

TOP: GUS CASELY-HAYFORD. COURTESY OF THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON.. BOTTOM: THE BENIN ROYAL MUSEUM WILL HOUSE MANY OF THE BRONZES LOOTED BY THE BRITISH AND SPREAD ACROSS MULTIPLE MUSEUMS AND INDIVIDUAL COLLECTIONS.

As African Art Thrives, Museums Grapple With Legacy of Colonialism

In 1897, 1,200 British troops captured and burned Benin City. It marked the end of independence for the Kingdom of Benin, which was in the modern-day Edo state in southern Nigeria. In addition to razing the city, British troops looted thousands of pieces of priceless and culturally significant art, known as the Benin bronzes.

More than a century later, the museums that house these pieces are grappling with the legacy of colonialism. Leaders in Africa have continued their call to get the Benin bronzes and other works of art taken by colonists back, at the same time as new museums open up across Africa. (In 2017, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art organized its first traveling exhibition in Africa showcasing the work of the Nigerian photographer Chief S. O. Alonge. The show, catalogue and educational program were organized and produced in partnership with Nigeria's national museum in Benin City. Alonge was the official photographer to the Royal Court of Benin.)

The British Museum, which has the largest collection of Benin bronzes, is in communication with Nigeria about returning the bronzes. They’re waiting for the completion of the Benin Royal Museum, a project planned for Benin City. Edo state officials recently tapped architect David Adjaye, who designed the National Museum of African American History and Culture, to do a feasibility study on the site.

Eye: South African Artist Tony Gum's 'Ode to She' Wins 2017 Miami Beach Pulse Prize

South African Artist Tony Gum's 'Ode to She' Wins 2017 Miami Beach Pulse Prize

South African artist Tony Gum is the recipient of the 2017 Miami Beach Pulse Prize. Gum's gallery Christopher Moller Gallery mounted a solo show for Gum, who is barely 22 years old. 

Gum's presentation 'Ode to She' is inspired by her own experiences and reflections as a Xhosa woman. Her work is rooted in the tradition of 'intonjane', an Xhosa rite of passage into womanhood practiced in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The ritual in which a girl is secluded at her homestead after her first period, is symbolic of her sexual maturity and ability to bear children.

AOC has previously written about the talented Tony Gum. See end of article. 

In Burkina Faso, French President Macron Addresses Restitution Of African Heritage From Museums

In Burkina Faso, French President Macron Addresses Restitution Of African Heritage From Museums

In a speech delivered on a visit to the West African republic of Burkina Faso, French president Emmanuel Macron has promised to make the restitution of French-owned African heritage a priority over the next five years.  Saying that he wants “the conditions to be met for the temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage to Africa”, Macron also spoke to the audience of about 800 students at the University of Ouagadougou about his desire to promote the mobility of talented people between Europe and Africa.

Notably, Macron's comments are at odds with a formal request made in March 2017 to then French President François Hollande, writes artnet News. Lawmakers and civil society groups from Benin wrote an open letter asking for the return of a host of "colonial treasures" 

Can A White Cube Museum & Conference Center In Lusanga Redress Economic Inequality In The Democratic Republic Of Congo?

A RENDERING OF THE WHITE CUBE IN LUSANGA (IMAGE: © OMA)

Can A White Cube Museum & Conference Center In Lusanga Redress Economic Inequality In The Democratic Republic Of Congo?

With the establishment of LIRCAEI, the iconic modernist White Cube will be recontextualized in the setting that has historically underwritten its development. In economic terms, plantations have funded not just the building of most European and American infrastructure and industries, but also that of museums and universities. On an ideological level, the violence and brutality unfolding on one side—the plantation zones—has informed and haunted the civility, taste and aesthetics championed at the other: the White Cubes. By colliding these two opposite poles of global value chains with each other, LIRCAEI aims to overcome both the monoculture of the plantation system—that exhausts people and the environment and the sterility of the White Cube—a free haven for critique, love, and singularity, that, more often than not, reaffirms class divides.

A RENDERING OF THE WHITE CUBE IN LUSANGA (IMAGE: © OMA)

Tony Gum Creates 'Mercurial Aesthetic' Free of Racial, Cultural Or Sexual Oppression

Tony Gum Creates 'Mercurial Aesthetic' Free of Racial, Cultural Or Sexual Oppression

Women artists were more obvious in this year's Art Basel in Miami, and especially at PULSE Miami Beach.

At Christopher Moller Gallery, young Capetown artist Tony Gum, born Zipho Gum, was such a smash in New York March 2016 and then Art Basel Miami December 2016, that she was just named in ArtNet's 14 Emerging Women Artists to Watch in 2017.

Vogue called Tony Gum "the coolest girl in Cape Town", based on her tightly curated Instagram feed. Her Instagram becomes a gallery to communicate with corporate brands like Coca-Cola and Adidas about issues of race, women, pop culture and art through the lens of her own penetrating, clear-eyed, articulate and sophisticated vision.

Sophia Linnewedel Is An African Queen For Wallpaper As Ethiopia Takes Us To The Edge Of Reason

 Sophia Linnewedel In 'African Queen' By Brigitte Niedermair For Wallpaper Magazine March 2016

AOC moves from the elegance of Paris' Galerie Bernard Dulon tribal art treasures, showcased by model Sophia Linnewedel to the Danakil Depression. 

Bubbling volcanoes light up the night sky, sulphurous mounds of yellow contort into otherworldly shapes, and mirages of camels cross lakes of salt. Lying 100m and more below sea level, the Danakil Depression is about the hottest and most inhospitable place on Earth. In fact it’s so surreal that it doesn’t feel like part of Earth at all. If you want genuine, raw adventure, then few corners of the globe can match this overwhelming wilderness. But come prepared because with temperatures frequently saying hello to 50°C and appalling ‘roads’, visiting this region is more an expedition than a tour. Source

Conde Nast Traveller UK March 2016 takes us to a place that defies human logic  Ethiopia: The Edge of Reason 

Valentino Spring 2016 & GlamTribale Jewelry & Gifts Honor Africa As The Origin of Human Civilization

Valentino Spring 2016 & GlamTribale Jewelry & Gifts Honor Africa As The Origin of Human Civilization

Boys Club | Cosby-Funded Smithsonian Art Exhibit Under A Cloud As More Damning Cosby Deposition Details Revealed

Boys Club | Cosby-Funded Smithsonian Art Exhibit Under A Cloud As More Damning Cosby Deposition Details Revealed

Bill Cosby’s Damaging 2005 Philadelphia Deposition

Bill Cosby, in Deposition, Said He Used Fame and Drugs to Seduce Women New York Times

With the release of Bill Cosby’s 2005 Philadelphia deposition , details about his eventually settled sexual assault case with Andrea Constand — and other young women, too — are jaw- dropping.

Simply stated, there is very little difference between Cosby’s statements in the deposition and the claims of as many as 50 women who allege that Cosby drugged them and assaulted them under the pretense of mentoring and befriending. 

Cosby — and now his wife Camille — insists that all sexual acts were consensual, that the women willingly took the drugs to relax and engaged freely in sex-related activities with him. It’s revealed in the deposition, though, that when asked if Ms. Therese Serignese, who Cosby met at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1976, was able to consent to sex when he gave her quaaludes in 1976, Cosby responded “I don’t know.” Cosby offered Serignese money for good grades.

As we reported a week ago, Bill Cosby acknowledged acquiring seven prescriptions for quaaludes which could be used to drug his targets. The 78-year-old comedian and chief moralizer about good behavior to America’s African American community admitted only to giving Benadryl to Constandin an effort to relax her.

Smithsonian Stands Firm On Cosby-Financed Exhibition

Smithsonian To Post Sign At Exhibition Featuring Bill Cosby-Owned Art NPR

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington has refused to curtail its current exhibition ‘Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue’, posting instead a sign telling visitors that the exhibition including art owned by Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, is “fundamentally about the artworks and the artists who created them, not Mr. Cosby,” representatives for the Smithsonian Institution say.

The museum acknowledges that it has received $716,000 from the Cosby family — an amount that totally funded the entire exhibition that opened in November 2014 —, and the family’s views are heavily woven into the fabric of the show’s online publicity, wrote The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones.