We remember Doran H. Ross, who passed away on September 16^th after a long illness. Doran was a towering presence in our field of African art studies, not just for his size and charismatic personality but for the legacy he has left us as a prodigious scholar, curator, and leader as well as friend and mentor to so many. It was at California State University, Fresno, working on a double major in art history and psychology, that he was first introduced to African art and where that journey really began. He received his M.A. in art history at UCSB and went on to teach at various California institutions until his distinguished career at the Fowler Museum began in 1981 as Associate Director and Curator of Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceanic arts; he later became Deputy Director and Curator of African Collections, before becoming the first non-faculty full-time Director in 1996, a position he held until he retired in 2001. His first major exhibition at the Fowler (then the UCLA Museum of Cultural History) was The Arts of Ghana (1977), which he co-curated with Herbert M. Cole, and was accompanied by a comprehensive publication he co-authored. Doran was among the most important scholars of Ghanaian arts in the world—many would argue the foremost—with research interests that centered on the royal and military arts of the Akan peoples, especially their dress, adornment, and regalia. Among his Akan publication highlights are Akan Gold from the Glassell Collection (2002); Royal Arts of the Akan: West African Gold in Museum Liaunig (2009); Art, Honor and Ridicule: Fante Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana (2017) with Silvia Forni; and Akan Transformations: Problems in Ghanaian Art History (1983), which he edited. Doran would fight anyone who claimed that any other African culture compared with that of Akan-speakers of Ghana.

Doran was largely responsible for setting the standard for the Fowler’s highly researched, contextualized, and multi-media exhibitions of global arts, always paired with a scholarly volume, a paradigm that continues to this day. He was firmly committed to a team approach for exhibition development, believing that exhibitions benefitted from diverse perspectives beyond those of the erudite scholar—a methodology then considered novel, but one he saw as essential. Among the many highlights of his tenure were his contributions to getting the new Fowler Museum facility designed and built in 1992. He signaled the new institution’s ambition and vision with four simultaneous inaugural exhibitions (each with its book), including Elephant! The Animal and its Ivory in African Culture, which he curated.

Drawing on his huge reservoir of energy, Doran oversaw many other projects: he managed and/or curated some 38 African and African-American exhibitions that were shown at 30 different venues nationally. For example, his tenacity in spearheading the Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou project (1995), co-curated by Donald J. Cosentino and Marilyn Houlberg, resulted in one of the Fowler’s most memorable exhibitions and publications. Doran curated the important community-based project, Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African-American Identity (1991), an initiative that involved a year-long African art and field collecting course he co-taught with the Fowler’s Director of Education Betsy Quick at Crenshaw High School. A smaller version of this exhibition, initiated and funded by NEH on the Road and co-organized with Quick, traveled to 35 community venues around the country. Over his long term at the Museum, Doran oversaw the acquisition of thousands of objects into its permanent collections. His years at the Fowler were also a time when the Museum’s national reputation as an innovator in the development of exhibitions, the engagement of community advisors, and the production of multi-author publications was established with authority. Many Fowler projects were funded by the NEH and it was Doran who set the stage for the Museum’s long and successful record of receiving major grants from this key federal agency. During his years at UCLA he also taught a three-quarter Museum Studies course, inspiring students to seek museum careers while also mentoring graduate students at UCLA and elsewhere who benefitted from his wisdom, experience, and generosity. Because he felt such gratitude to his mentor and friend Skip Cole for inviting him as a graduate student to contribute to The Arts of Ghana, he went out of his way throughout his career to assist and advise students, and to create opportunities for them to publish their research. Doran served as an editor of the UCLA journal African Arts from 1988-2015, and published in it 47 articles, reviews, First Words, In Memoria, and Portfolios from 1974–2014.

Were that not enough, Doran also guest curated numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally, working with large and small institutions; and consulted on collections building, film projects, self-study institutional initiatives, federal grant reviews, and museum studies programs. Over a span of several years, he also worked closely with two important collections of Akan gold at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Museum Liaunig in Austria.

As a great proponent of research and exhibitions on global textiles, he also was co-editor of Textile: the Journal of Cloth and Culture from 2002 to 2012 and editor of volume 1 (Africa), The Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion (2010), both with Joanne B. Eicher. Doran was especially proud of the National Museum of Mali/UCLA Museum of Cultural History Joint Textile Collection and Documentation Project (1986–1992); while building collections for both institutions, he mandated that when questions of quality arose, the better example would be reserved for the National Museum of Mali. Always, Africa first.

Beyond Doran’s direct responsibilities associated with UCLA and Fowler projects, he was extremely committed to helping institutions and individuals in Africa. From 1974 to his last trip in 2014, he made 37 research and development trips to 18 African countries. Following the joint collection project with the National Museum of Mali, he served on the Board of the West African Museums Project (1993–2000), a policy and programmatic initiative to which he was deeply committed. As well, he served on the Selection Committee of the SSRC African Archives and Museums Project (1991–1996), was a member of the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Advisory Panel of the NEA (1996–1999) and of the Advisory Committee of the Getty Leadership Institute (2000–2003).

Somehow, between writing and curating, building collections and consulting, he found time to be a lifelong student of film (his library numbered some 3000 DVDs) and music, most especially western Classical music, American jazz, and tradition-based and contemporary African music. Name a composer, a particular arrangement, or an obscure artist and undoubtedly one would find it in his library of 5000 meticulously catalogued CDs.

Doran’s participation in and promotion of ACASA is the stuff of legend. He joined the Board in 1984 and served as Secretary/Treasurer (1984-87), was Program Chair for the 7^th Triennial in 1986, became President in 1987-1989, received the Arnold Rubin Book award in 2001 for Wrapped in Pride, served on the Rubin Book Award and Leadership Award Committees, and received the ACASA Leadership Award in 2011. His support of ACASA never waned and he attended every Triennial Symposium from Washington, D.C. in 1977 to Brooklyn in 2014.

In recent years, Fowler staff have been working with Doran on two exhibitions of Ghanaian art well represented in its collections: Art, Honor, and Ridicule: Fante Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana (an exhibition that opened at the ROM in 2017 and was co-curated with Silvia Forni) and the paintings of Kwame Akoto (a.k.a. Almighty God). They will be presented to honor Doran and his remarkable legacy of service to the Fowler and UCLA.

Doran Ross lived life to his fullest and his generosity of spirit knew no bounds. Just as his career was one of intense engagement and productivity, so too did he lavish his warm, teasing affection and robust sense of humor on his many friends near and far. His wordsmithing delights found joy in puns of all varieties, and the occasional pause in conversation signaled an always-hilarious play on words. He will be greatly missed by so many who loved him. He is survived by his sister Diane and by Betsy Quick, his partner of some 20 years.

I thank Suzanne Gott for sharing these lines from a fitting Akan song of mourning recorded by the late great Ghanaian ethnomusicologist Kwabena Nketia:

“The mighty tree with big branches laden with fruit. When children come to you, they find something to eat.”

• Marla Berns and Betsy Quick

The Doran H. Ross Fund for African Exhibitions has been established at the Fowler Museum to honor Doran. For information about donations, please contact Kris Lewis, Director of Development, at Krislewis@arts.ucla.edu

The African Critical Inquiry Programme has named Nsima Udo as recipient of the 2020 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Award. Udo is a Nigerian student pursuing his PhD in History at the University of the Western Cape. Support from ACIP’s Ivan Karp Award will allow Udo to do significant research for his dissertation. He plans to do research in Calabar, Nigeria for his project, The Politics of Aesthetics and Performance: Visuality and the Remaking of Culture in the Calabar Festival and Carnival, 2004 -2019.

Founded in 2012, the African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) is a partnership between the Centre for Humanities Research at University of the Western Cape in Cape Town and the Laney Graduate School of Emory University in Atlanta. Supported by donations to the Ivan Karp and Corinne Kratz Fund, the ACIP fosters thinking and working across public cultural institutions, across disciplines and fields, and across generations. It seeks to advance inquiry and debate about the roles and practice of public culture, public cultural institutions, and public scholarship in shaping identities and society in Africa through an annual ACIP Workshop and through the Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards, which support African doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences enrolled at South African universities.

Nsima Udo

About Nsima Udo’s project: The Calabar Festival and Carnival recently became an annual event in Cross River State, Nigeria that blends elements of local cultural festivals with aspects of Caribbean carnival, which dates back to the second half of the 18th century and combines indigenous, European, and African performance traditions. When the Calabar Festival and Carnival began in 2004, some of these influences ‘returned’ to Africa and were remade at a time of political-economic change that demanded revenue diversification and the creation of a tourist economy in Nigeria. This study uses the convergence of festival performances, visuality, and local sensibilities to tease out different forms of aesthetics – the relationship between the festival and its cultural and artistic expressions – and to analyse their historical resonance in the ongoing Calabar Festival and Carnival over the past two decades. It engages with diverse performance traditions — dance, music, masquerades, floats, puppetry, street parades, and revelry during the carnival – and with photographs as “social griots” (Keller 2003) to articulate and historicize the changing sociocultural topography of an ongoing African festival.

In recent literature, the Calabar Festival and Carnival has mainly been seen in relation to the politics and cultural symbolisms in Nigeria at the time, ignoring the multifocal photographic practices that pervade the festival. This elaborate festival should not simply be reduced to the political. This project will interrogate the Calabar Festival and Carnival as a platform for the expression of multilayered aesthetics – in traditions and practice. Relying on film footage and photographs in government archives, online repositories, and personal albums, it will examine the festival through analysis of archival material, imagery, and through ethnographic research, focusing on questions around carnival performance, participation, forms of dissonance, photographic practices and image analysis, and the African aspects of the carnival. By exploring the politics of provenance, sociocultural dynamics, and the political economics of carnival festival, it will map a history of the Calabar Festival and Carnival between 2004 and 2019. How has festival become a framework through which strands of global popular cultures interweave with indigenous philosophies and performance to promote the local economy and politics? What do visual depictions do to the performance traditions of a remade carnival that has traveled from Africa to the Caribbean and back to Calabar? This project will help to understand the “carnivalization of festival,” where indigenous festivals across Africa are being repackaged as carnival festivals in the past two decades.

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Information about the 2021 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards for African students enrolled in South African Ph.D. programmes will be available in November 2020. The application deadline is 3 May 2021.

For further information, see http://www.gs.emory.edu/about/special/acip.html and https://www.facebook.com/ivan.karp.corinne.kratz.fund.

Dear ACASA Members,

On September 27, the ACASA Board voted to hold our Triennial conference in June 2021 remotely. We are all disheartened that we will not be gathering together in Chicago after three years of planning and organizing. We realize that it is possible that an effective COVID 19 vaccine will be available in 2021. Whether it will be evenly accessible across the globe and in time to make travel arrangements, is largely unknown. We also discussed the viability of pushing our conference forward to Winter 2021. Ultimately, we felt postponing further would still leave us with too many unknowns. The hard work that so many folks put into our Chicago event, specifically Mark DeLancey and Costa Petridis and our programming and fundraising committees, is commendable. It is our mission to plan and execute a dynamic, interactive meeting, that takes into consideration our magnitude and scope, our various time zones and internet capabilities, and our need for thoughtful engagement outside panel presentations.

We are looking to ASA, CAA, and the Smithsonian for best models and platforms and our programming committee is considering the ideal format. Some of you have had experience with virtual conferences over the last eight months and we welcome your suggestions.

Peri

ACASA Triennial 2020 Update

Dear ACASA Members, 

Guided by the health, safety and well-being of our members and the new restrictions on travel and gatherings, it is with a heavy heart that I am writing to tell you that the Executive Board and I have decided to postpone our ACASA Triennial.  Our organizing team has arranged for us to meet June 15-June 20, 2021 at DePaul University and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Programming Committee has decided to effectively “freeze” the program as is, and to continue the programming process again in October.  We will be in touch at that time.  In the meantime, if Chairs are aware that existing participants of their panels may not be able to attend in 2021, they should please solicit replacements to make sure their panels remain complete.

As regards travel grants, the application process has now closed but all travel grants for 2020 will be honored and carried over to 2021. If money becomes available, we will consider the waiting list – nothing has changed in that regard.

Our awards recipients will also be recognized at the 2021 Triennial.  We will be notifying the awardees by the end of May, 2020.  All books, dissertations and exhibitions that come out in the interim will be reviewed in the next awards cycle.

I want to take a moment to recognize the efforts that each committee has put into our Triennial and the many members and institutions who have donated to support it.  We look forward to celebrating your efforts in 2021.

Thank you again for your patience and your dedication.

Stay well and warm wishes,
Peri

The Yoruba Elders International Society, Rhode Island Chapter, made a lifetime achievement award to Jean Borgatti, a past president of ACASA, on October 19, 2019 at their 10th annual lecture and recognition event held at the Statehouse in Providence, RI. The organization established this award as part of an “Everyday Heroes” award program in support of the UN General Assembly Resolution 68/237 proclaiming the decade 2015-2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent, and promoting a greater knowledge of, and respect for the diverse heritage, culture, and contributions of people of African descent to the development of society.  Borgatti was also their keynote speaker, talking about the impact of Yoruba culture on artists of the African diaspora both past and present. She is shown here accepting a plaque from Pastor Emmanuel Taiwo, Board Member, Yoruba Elders International Society, and Evangelist In Charge, Celestial Church of Christ, Warwick, RI.

Statement Concerning Destruction of Cultural Patrimony in Bafut

20 November 2019

The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA)—an independent professional association  which exists to facilitate communication among scholars, teachers, students, artists, museum specialists, collectors, and all others interested in the arts of Africa and the African Diaspora—condemns the violent aggression perpetrated by the Republic of Cameroon against the Palace of Bafut, a site included on UNESCO’s Tentative List of World Heritage Sites since 2006.  Human Rights Watch reports that “On September 24 [2019], soldiers from the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) attacked and looted the Royal Palace in Bafut, North-West region.”  (https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/10/11/world-heritage-site-attacked-cameroon#)  Fon Abumbi II of Bafut protested the aggression in a letter dated September 24, 2019 and addressed to the Governor of North West Region.  In addition to causing damage to buildings within the palace and perpetrating violence against those who had been neither charged nor tried in a court of law, these troops representing the authority of the State shamelessly stole historical objects from the palace museum.

According to the World Monuments Fund, the palace “embodies Bafut cultural identity and remains a center for religious rites and traditional ceremonies. Over 50 houses are clustered around the site’s spiritual core, Achum Shrine, and are used by the Fon (king), his wives, and the royal court.” (https://www.wmf.org/project/bafut-palace)  The palaces and museums of the North West Region of Cameroon serve as invaluable repositories of the long-standing traditions and material cultures of these vibrant kingdoms. These palaces and associated sites—where ritual practices have long been performed—foster and house the heritages, both tangible and intangible of these communities.  The violent destruction and looting of such a site may be understood as an attempt to erase the cultural identity of the Bafut population.  As a site listed on the Tentative List of World Heritage Sites, Bafut Palace is recognized as holding even greater than just local significance, constituting a primary locus of cultural heritage for the entirety of Cameroon, and indeed the world.  The Cameroonian State must treat these places as the internationally significant cultural heritage sites that they are. 

ACASA calls on the Republic of Cameroon to protect sites of cultural heritage as required by being party to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property.  According to Article 4(3) of the aforementioned convention, it is the obligation of the State “to prohibit, prevent and, if necessary, put a story to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed against, cultural property….”  In light of this international obligation, the Cameroonian State must bring to justice and punish appropriately those responsible for this heinous act.  Furthermore, every effort must be taken to return looted items of cultural heritage to the palace museum of Bafut. 

CC:

Paul Biya, President of the Republic of Cameroon

Henri Etoundi Essomba, Ambassador of the Republic of Cameroon to the US

Peter Henry Barlein, US Ambassador to the Republic of Cameroon

Narcisse Mouelle Kombi, Minister of Arts and Culture for the Republic of Cameroon

UNESCO

World Monuments Fund

https://www.acasaonline.org/3461-2/

Join us for ACASA’s 18th Triennial Symposium in Chicago, June 16-21, 2020 at DePaul University and the Art Institute of Chicago. For registration and more information, click here.  

The Awards for Curatorial Excellence recognize the important contributions to the dissemination and understanding of African and African Diaspora Arts made through exhibitions.  Exhibitions related to permanent collections, loan shows, commissioned works or community interventions organized by museums, galleries, cultural centers, and exhibition spaces of all sorts are eligible. Up to two awards for curatorial excellence will be given. Runners up may also be recognized.

Eligibility

Exhibition eligibility:  September 1, 2019 through August 30, 2023. Nominees must be ACASA members in good standing. Join ACASA

This award submission is currently closed.  It will open after the ACASA Triennial in June 2021.

Submissions should then be received by Friday, November 17, 2023.

Submission Materials

All submissions should include the following materials:

1. Cover page indicating title of exhibition, dates, venue(s), curator(s) names
2. Synopsis of exhibition (one-page)
3. Sample publication where applicable. This can include PDFs of take-away brochures, exhibition preview article or other means of documentation and distribution of project. If no publication was possible, please submit a bibliography of 5 key sources germane to the show’s thesis or points of departure.
4. Sample didactics (labels or other interpretive materials, such as on-line description, that demonstrate the exhibition’s intellectual content and curatorial vision. Not to exceed 3-pages)
5. Visual documentation: up to 5 still digital images, at least one of which must show installation, context or performance space; up to 2 videos or links, not to exceed 3 minutes in length to document performance or time-based projects.
6. Link to or documentation of innovative uses of technology or interactive engagement
7. Description of institution, organization or entity originating the exhibition (for example museum, independent art space, pop-up…, including mission, history, collection (if applicable), size, staff, budget, audience and other information pertinent to understanding the context in which the exhibition emerged.
8. Documentation of community response. Up to three (3) examples that demonstrate various perspectives. These might include emails, sample entries from audience response books, or social media postings and not just critical or press reviews.

Assessment Criteria

For consideration for this award, the awards committee will consider exhibitions that:

1. Generate new scholarship across the humanities or beyond
2. Open new perspectives on the field
3. Collaborate with and/or contribute to local or stakeholder communities
4. Demonstrate innovative approaches to exhibition design and presentation
5. Expand understandings or uses of technology

Please contact the ACASA Secretary for questions or comments.

2017  Awards for Curatorial Excellence

Karen E. Milbourne, Earth Matters, National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C., April 22, 2013 – March 2014

Jean Borgatti, Global Africa, Fitchburg Art Museum, November 2014 – August 2017

Antawan I. Byrd and Yves Chatap, [Re]Generations, Musée du District de Bamako, October 31 – December 31, 2015

DAK’ART – Biennial of Contemporary African Art will be held from 28 May to 28 June 2020 in Dakar, under the high patronage of the President of the Republic of Senegal. This fourteenth edition, which marks the biennial’s 30th anniversary, will have the general theme Ĩ’Ndaffa / Out of the fire.

Ĩ’Ndaffa, in Serer language, means to forge. It is a verb that denotes the dynamics and the action of creating, recreating and kneading. This general theme refers to the creation of a new and autonomous world, which nourishes the diversity of contemporary African creativities, while projecting new ways of telling and approaching Africa, in a constant dialogue and interaction with the rest of the world.

The call for applications to the biennial’s International Exhibition is open from 1 July to 15 September 2019. It is open to all artists from Africa and the Diaspora, working across all aesthetic mediums and contemporary art forms.

Applications are to be sent by email to candidature2020@biennaledakar.org and by post before 15 September 2019 to Secrétariat général de la Biennale de Dakar, 19 avenue Hassan II, 1er Etage, BP: 3865 Dakar, SENEGAL.

The concept note and the application form are available on DAK’ART website.