Student rates are now 15 USD for undergraduates, and 30 USD for graduate students (MA/PhD).

An ACASA Student Membership lets you…

• Support your interest in African and African diaspora arts
• Connect with colleagues across the globe via our events and Member Directory
• Submit your PhD thesis for the Roy Sieber Dissertation Award (includes cash prize & article-writing mentorship)
• Learn more about the field/share your news in our 3x a year Members Newsletter or via our social media accounts
• Receive discounted rates for the Triennial Symposium on African
• Gain opportunities to participate in ACASA-sponsored panels at major conferences like CAA and ASA  ……and more!

PS. Based in Africa or the Caribbean? Membership is always free

Join ACASA Today

Please share this widely with the students in your life!

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With global membership, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) promotes greater understanding of African material and expressive culture in all its many forms, and encourages contact and collaboration with African and Diaspora artists and scholars.

ACASA is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.

Honorarium of $1000 for Hosts

Deadline to Apply: December 1, 2021

Dear Friends:

I am reaching out on behalf of CAA and the National Committee of the History of Art (NCHA) to encourage you to consider serving as a host for the 2022 CAA-Getty International Program. Since it began in 2012, the program has brought 135 scholars to CAA’s annual conferences, from fifty countries located in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. A preconference colloquium on international topics in art history traditionally inaugurates the week of CAA’s annual meeting, kicking off four days of conference sessions, meetings with new colleagues, and visits to museums and galleries. Subsequent to these events, the program has generated many scholarly collaborations, including publications, conferences, and exhibitions.

Now in its 11^th year, the CAA-Getty International Program will bring twelve scholars from seven countries to Chicago for CAA’s upcoming in-person annual conference, February 16-19, 2022. We are eager to identify six hosts to provide a warm welcome to these colleagues.

Each host will receive an honorarium of $1000 for hosting two international colleagues. In return, we ask that each host please:

• Send, by January 11^th, an email to the participants they are hosting to offer help in meeting American colleagues, proposing conference sessions and events, and/or visiting museums/collections of particular interest;
• Attend the welcome dinner on Monday evening, February 14;
• Participate in the preconference colloquium on Tuesday, February 15, at the Chicago Hilton;
• Attend, if possible, the conference session on Thursday morning, February 18, presented by the CAA-Getty alumni, “Can Art History Be Affective? Empathy, Emotion and the Art Historian,” 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM (CST) at the Chicago Hilton, and the CAA-NCHA Reception, later in the
• Invite, if applicable, their international colleagues to the business meeting of their affiliated society and introduce him/her/them to colleagues in their

Interested? – Please submit a statement of interest (approximately 250 words) and a short CV to Dr. Cali Buckley, Content Manager: Education & Intellectual Property and Director of the CAA-Getty Program, CAA, at CBuckley@collegeart.org, by Wednesday, December 1, 2021.

CAA and NCHA will review the applications with an eye to finding the strongest matches between hosts and grantees based on academic interests. We will notify all host applicants of final decisions by Friday, December 10^th.

Questions? Please reach out to Dr. Cali Buckley, Content Manager: Education & Intellectual Property and Director of the CAA-Getty Program, CAA, at CBuckley@collegeart.org.

Thank you for your consideration.

We look forward to hearing from you! All best,

Anne Collins Goodyear

Vice President, National Committee for the History of Art Co-Director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

President Emerita, College Art Association

The African Critical Inquiry Programme has named Bongiwe Hlekiso and Robert Uys as recipients of the 2021 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards. Both are South African students in History at the University of the Western Cape. Support from ACIP’s Ivan Karp Award will allow Hlekiso to do significant research for her dissertation, Becoming a Hidden Treasure: A Biography of Umbhaco and its Interrupted Trajectories, including work on collections and display histories at the Amathole Museum and East London Museum in the Eastern Cape. Uys will use his Ivan Karp Award support to pursue research in uMgungundlovu (Zululand), Ulundi and Pietermaritzburg for his project The Place Where the Elephants Meet: Nationalist Myth-making at uMgungundlovu and Dingaanstat, 1838-2020.

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.

About Bongiwe Hlekiso’s project

Becoming a Hidden Treasure will trace biographies of umbhaco, a skirt that is worn by Xhosa-speaking women when getting married, attending ceremonies and on other special celebratory occasions. It is mainly – although not always – identified through its off-white colour, floor length span and horizontal black lines in the bottom half of the skirt. Yet, the pattern, colour and length continually change as it undergoes different processes of production, circulation and consumption. This has led me into tracing the different spaces through which umbhaco moves, including shops in the Woodstock area in Cape Town, small trading shops in Voortrekker road and Bellville, museums and art galleries. Umbhaco has also been repurposed in the fashion industry by designers such as Stoned Cherrie and many more in clothing lines for women and men.

The project starts with locating umbhaco within Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG), where it was displayed in the Hidden Treasures exhibition from August 2017 to January 2020. Yet the garment is far from being merely a museum object, sometimes portrayed there as fixed in meaning for what is often incorrectly referred to as Xhosa culture and tradition. I will examine the multifaceted use of umbhaco in and beyond the spaces of the museum and these other imaginations of tradition, examining the making of umbhaco by different producers and what stories are told through its making. The project will include working with collections, accession records and histories of umbhaco display at the Amathole Museum and East London Museum in the Eastern Cape, as well as at ISANG and the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum. I will also interview producers, distributors and wearers of umbhaco to analyse the various narratives around its diverse uses. Becoming a Hidden Treasure will interrogate the garment as a cultural commodity and how different and changing meanings and values are placed on it.

 

About Roberty Uys’ project:

The Place Where the Elephants Meet is concerned with the stories of uMgungundlovu (the gathering place of elephants) – a mythically and narratively textured site in Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal. uMgungundlovu is historically charged and the site of origin for some of South Africa’s most salient nationalist myths. It’s located near the Zulu Valley of the Kings and was the site of the royal enclosure and capital built by Dingane Senzangakhona Zulu after he assassinated his half-brother Shaka and became king in 1828. It is a site ingrained within the mythic consciousness of what would become known as the Zulu people. Simultaneously, uMgungundlovu has a central role in Afrikaner nationalist myth – this is the place where Voortrekker Piet Retief and the seventy Burgers who sought Zulu land were massacred at Dingane’s order. This research will consider the intersecting nationalist mythologies of uMgungundlovu. It will consider how these myths were created, propelled and rebelled against through the different sets of structures built at the site: Retief’s grave and a monument erected in 1922, a Dutch Reformed Church mission station inaugurated in 1949 (and burned down in 1989), a replica of Dingane’s royal enclosure dating from the 1980s, and a new Multimedia Centre with displays on Zulu history built in 2008. I will explore some of the fallacies of the myths affiliated with these structures. However, the point of convergence will be on how myth was utilized as a positive force, something that brought depth and meaning to people’s lives living in and around uMgungundlovu.

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Information about the 2022 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards for African students enrolled in South African Ph.D. programmes will be available in November 2021. The application deadline is 2 May 2022.

 

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

 

The ACASA Triennial 2021 happened online from June 16 to 20, 2021. It was a dynamic, interactive meeting, taking into consideration our magnitude and scope, our various time zones and internet capabilities, and our need for thoughtful engagement outside panel presentations.

We are happy to announce our new ACASA board. Congratulations to all incoming board members. We wish them exciting times!

President: Peju Layiwola (rotating from Vice President)

Past President: Peri Klemm (rotating from President; outgoing: Shannen Hill)

Vice President: Elizabeth Perrill (outgoing: Peju Layiwola)

Secretary: Candace Keller (outgoing: Cynthia Becker)

Treasurer: Kris Juncker (outgoing: Rachel Kabukula)

Webmaster: Kehinde Shobukonla (outgoing: Nadine Siegert)

Newsletter Editor: Kristen Windmuller-Luna (outgoing: Fiona Siegenthaler)

Social Media Editor: Amanda Maples (outgoing: Brenda Schmahmann)

Remaining on the board until ASA 2022 are:

Erica Jones, Website Editor

Olubukola Gbadegesin, CAA Liaison

Find here the recorded conference from February, 17 2021:
https://psu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/newest+Clip+of+Conference+to++Celebrate+the+Contributions+of+Professor+William+Dewey/1_5l5tnx52

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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.

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.

2021 ACASA Awards for Curatorial Excellence Recipients

Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa, The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, January 26 – July 21, 2019

Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, Spectacles. Speculations…, blaxTARLINES Kumasi, February 8 – April 30, 2018

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.