PROGRAM ABSTRACTS FOR THE 15TH TRIENNIAL SYMPOSIUM ON AFRICAN ART Africa and Its Diasporas in the Market Place: Cultural Resources and the Global Economy The core theme of the 2011 ACASA symposium, proposed by Pamela Allara, examines the current status of Africa’s cultural resources and the influence—for good or ill—of market forces both inside and outside the continent. As nation states decline in influence and power, and corporations, private patrons and foundations increasingly determine the kinds of cultural production that will be supported, how is African art being reinterpreted and by whom? Are artists and scholars able to successfully articulate their own intellectual and cultural values in this climate? Is there anything we can do to address the situation? WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 2O11, MUSEUM PROGRAM All Museum Program panels are in the Lenart Auditorium, Fowler Museum at UCLA Welcoming Remarks (8:30). Jean Borgatti, Steven Nelson, and Marla C. Berns PANEL I (8:45–10:45) Contemporary Art Sans Frontières. Chairs: Barbara Thompson, Stanford University, and Gemma Rodrigues, Fowler Museum at UCLA Contemporary African art is a phenomenon that transcends and complicates traditional curatorial categories and disciplinary boundaries. These overlaps have at times excluded contemporary African art from exhibitions and collections and, at other times, transformed its research and display into a contested terrain. At a moment when many museums with so‐called ethnographic collections are expanding their chronological reach by teasing out connections between traditional and contemporary artistic production, many museums of Euro‐American contemporary art are extending their geographic reach by globalizing their curatorial vision. Given such a state of flux, how might curators of African art ensure that their institutions embrace the study, display, and collection of contemporary African art? How might curators of African art, whose approaches have traditionally been grounded in an area studies model, respond to the notion of contemporary art as a form of artistic production that transcends borders? How might these differing paradigms—one grounded in specificities of the local and the other embracing ideals of placelessness—work in conjunction to enlarge and enrich each other’s curatorial vision? Are there frameworks that already exist in other academic disciplines that museums might use as models for improved cross‐disciplinary collaboration or departmental desegregation? Critical Objects: Museum Habitus and the Problem of Category. Allyson Purpura, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Though distinctions clearly exist between (and within) “tradition‐based” and “contemporary” arts, as objects or events of display, they may both be used to call into question the categories of knowledge that museums rely on to frame or interpret them. Both tradition‐ and studio‐ based arts of Africa (and of the global south generally) are complicated by histories of colonization, fetishization, commodification and disenfranchisement, but in different ways. For the former, it is largely the objects that are fetishized; for the latter, it is the artists. A way forward from such constraints is to allow collection installations to problematize the very 1 discourses and categories in which African objects and artists have been defined. A way to inform that process is to take cues from the work of contemporary artists themselves. I will explore this premise by discussing some accidental connections between several recent projects: working with an artist on his solo exhibition; the reconfiguring of Krannert Art Museum’s African collection gallery as an “iterative,” anticipatory space—one that brings the idea of contemporaneity to bear on both tradition—and studio‐based practices; and preliminary lessons from working with an emerging contemporary artists’ collective in Addis. Africa, Meet Contemporary—Contemporary, Meet Africa; or, Integrating Regional and Contemporary without Sacrifice. Kinsey Katchka, North Carolina Museum of Art In this presentation I address the question of boundaries and territoriality within museum spaces as seen from varied perspectives. I consider the complications and implications of incorporating contemporary African art into encyclopedic museums, whose collections and galleries have a historically Euro‐/Ameri‐centric orientation. Architecture plays a prominent role in positioning collection areas. Visual arts in the Western tradition, including contemporary art, often occupy prime territory, while African art is less accessible and effectively marginalized. Even museums undergoing reinstallation projects may face limitations imposed by the building’s original design, despite an institution’s or a curator’s best intentions. Physical spaces profoundly impact what is, and is not, possible as paradigms shift and museums systematically collect contemporary African art. Where does contemporary African art fit into reified spaces? At the same time, curators must also reckon with ambiguous boundaries and territoriality within their museums as contemporary African art defies long‐standing distinctions embedded in their departments, databases, and collection practices. Drawing on personal experience with two wholesale reinstallation projects, I lay bare practical components that inhibit and/or facilitate implementation of progressive, or at least experimental, aspirations. Unbounded: Contemporary Arts of Africa in Global Dialogue. Christa Clarke, Newark Museum In contrast to most art institutions, the Newark Museum does not have a stand‐alone department devoted to contemporary art nor a single curator responsible for its institutional representation. Several curatorial departments in the Museum—African, American, Native American, Asian, and Decorative Arts—acquire contemporary art, building collections that speak to varied departmental interests and reflect different areas of expertise. This presentation will focus on a Newark Museum exhibition Unbounded: New Art for a New Century (2009), which situated the work of contemporary African artists alongside that of other artists whose works have entered the museum’s collection through the departments of American Art, Arts of Asia, and Decorative Arts. The curatorial model adopted was cross‐departmental, emphasizing myriad points of connection—intentional and otherwise—among works of art produced by artists around the world. Within this global framework, the curators each brought their specialized perspectives to bear in the collaborative representation of contemporary art. The institutional paradigm proposed by Unbounded—reflected in both the exhibition and its interpretation— acknowledges a multiplicity of artistic centers and many ways of art making. In so doing, it offers a new model for presenting the arts of contemporary Africa in global dialogue. 2 Curating in the Twenty-First Century. Tumelo Mosaka, University of Illinois Despite the pressing need for sustentative reform in museum practices, most traditional institutions have remained relatively unchanged for decades—whether in traditional or contemporary African arts. In the current, fiercely competitive cultural marketplace, museums can no longer afford to act as sacred spaces. Hence, discussions about increased community involvement, relevance, populist approaches, and public access have brought curatorial production into focus as a critical tool for reformulating exhibition frameworks and articulating the artist’s stance in relationship to both historical and present moments. Such explorations have been more evident in recent scholarship on contemporary African and Diaspora arts, offering a rich ground against which to address a range of artistic concerns, including a critique of the institution. I will focus on strategies such as the development of new curatorial identities where artist‐curators play prominent roles in exhibition development. Also important to consider is the incorporation of performative practices into sites of display as a way of producing new sensibilities. Such methods are gestures toward invigorating a new sense of purpose, and they complicate answers to the question of what museums are today. Dismantling the House. Allan deSouza, San Francisco Art Institute How do museums and curators respond to the increasingly common contemporary situation of shifting demographics and multiple migrations whereby “places of origin” are no longer defining formations of art practices? And is it possible for this response to examine the continuing importance of place and cultural location as themselves the subjects and inquiry of artwork, without reading them only as causatively linked? How does the museum/archive situate an art practice that resists being read through paradigms of “African‐ness” yet one that still frames itself through a cultural politics derived from the colonization of Africa? What are the appropriate framing mechanisms for contemporary art that locates itself through discourse rather than through geographic‐ or cultural‐specificity? Using examples from the current exhibition at the Fowler, His Masters’ Tools, this presentation will seek to address these questions from the viewpoints of the artist’s various classifications as “South Asian,” “Black British,” “Asian American,” as unspecified “artist,” and especially as a “contemporary African artist.” PANEL II (11:00–1:00) To Collect or Not to Collect, to Exhibit or Not to Exhibit: Issues of Provenance and Patrimony. Chair: Kristina Van Dyke, The Menil