Past ACASA Leadership Awards
2024
Robin Poynor
Anitra Nettleton
2021
Marla Berns
Suzanne Blier
2017
Sidney Kasfir
Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts
2014
Jean Borgatti
Henry Drewal
2011
Doran Ross
Rowland Abiodun
2007
Susan Vogel
2004
Joanne Eicher
Ekpo Eyo
2001
Herbert Cole
John Picton
1998
Labelle Prussin
Merrick Posnansky
1995
Frank Willett
Robert Farris Thompson
1992
Simon Ottenberg
1989
Warren d’Azevedo
Douglas Fraser
1986
Roy Sieber
William Fagg
Past Roy Sieber Dissertation Awards
2024
Rebecca Wolff for “Experience and Memory: The Nigerian Civil War (1967–70) and Its Effect on Nigerian Contemporary Art”
Honorable Mention:
Greer Odile Valley for “Legacies and Afterlives of Dutch Colonialism: Told and Imagined Accounts of South African Colonial Histories in Contemporary Exhibition Practice”
2021
Kate Cowcher, Between Revolutionary Motherland and Death: Art and Visual Culture in Socialist Ethiopia, Stanford University, 2017.
Sandrine Colard, Photography in the Colonial Congo (1885-1960), Columbia University, 2016.
Honorable Mention:
Chika Chinyeogwa Chudi-Duru, Exploration of Akwete Weaves Motifs for Adaptation on Printed Textiles for Apparel Production, Ahmadu Bello University, 2017.
2017
Giulia Paoletti, Un Nouveau Besoin: Photography and Portraiture in Senegal (1860-1960). Supervisor Z.S. Strother (Columbia)
2014
Amanda Rogers, Politics, Gender and the Art of Religious Authority in North Africa: Moroccan Women’s Henna Practice, Emory University, 2013.
2011
Alexander Bortolot, A Language for Change: Creativity and Power in Mozambican Makonde Masked Performance, circa 1900-2004, Columbia University, 2007.
Honorable Mention:
Nichole Bridges, Contact, Commentary, and Kongo Memory: Perspectives on Loango Coast Souvenir Ivories, ca. 1840-1910, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2009.
2007
Venny M. Nakazibwe, Bark-Cloth of the Baganda People of Southern Uganda: A Record of Continuity and Change from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Early Twenty-first Century (supervisor: Jackie Guille), Middlesex University, 2005.
Chika Okeke-Agulu, Nigerian Art in the Independence Decade: 1957-1967 (Supervisor: Sidney Kasfir), Emory University, Art History Department, 2004.
2004
David Doris, Vigilant Things: The Strange Fate of Ordinary Objects in Southwestern Nigeria (Supervisor: Robert Farris Thompson), Yale University, Department of the History of Art, 2003.
Kim Miller, The Philani Printing Project: Women’s Art and Activism in Crossroads, South Africa (Supervisor: Henry John Drewal), University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Art History, 2003.
Past Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Awards
2024
Single author winners:
Jennifer Bajorek for Unfixed: Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa (Duke 2020)
Delinda Collier for Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa (Duke 2020)
Barbara Frank for Griot Potters of the Folona: The History of an African Ceramic Tradition (Indiana 2021)
Matthew Rarey for Insignificant Things: Amulets and the Art of Survival in the Early Black Atlantic (Duke 2023)
Single author honorable mention (in no particular order):
Christa Clarke for The Activist Collector: Lida Clanton Broner’s 1938 Journey from Newark to South Africa (Newark Museum & Rutgers 2022)
Jordan Fenton for Masquerade and Money in Urban Nigeria: The Case of Calabar (U of Rochester 2022)
Ferdinand de Jong for Decolonizing Heritage: Time to Repair in Senegal (Cambridge 2022)
Okechukwu Nwafor for Aso Ebi: Dress, Fashion, Visual Culture, and Urban Cosmopolitanism in West Africa (Michigan 2021)
Multi-author winners:
Bongi Dhlomo and Pfunzo Sidogi for Mihloti Ya Ntasako: Journeys with the Bongi Dhlomo Collection (Javett Art Centre, U of Pretoria 2022)
Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu for El Anatsui: The Reinvention of Sculpture (Damiani 2022)
Perrin Lathrop (ed) for African Modernism in America (Fisk & Yale 2022)
José da Silva Horta, Carlos Almeida, and Peter Mark (eds) for African Ivories in the Atlantic World, 1400-1900 (Centre for History of the University of Lisbon 2021)
Multi-author honorable mention (in no particular order):
Bennetta Jules-Rosette & J.R. Osborn for African Art Reframed: Reflections and Dialogues on Museum Culture (Illinois 2021)
Contanstijn Petridis (ed) for The Language of Beauty in African Art (AIC & Yale 2022)
Allen Roberts, Marla Berns, Tom Joyce, Henry J. Drewal, William Dewey, and Candace Goucher (eds) for Striking Iron: The Art of the African Blacksmith (Fowler Museum UCLA 2019)
Ray Silverman and Neal Sobania for Ethiopian Church Art: Painters, Patrons, and Purveyors (Tsehai 2022)
2021
John W. Monroe, Metropolitan Fetish: African Sculpture and the Imperial French Invention of Primitive Art, Cornell University Press, 2019.
Gaëlle Beaujean, L’art de cour d’Abomey – Le sens des objects, Presses du réel, 2019.
Lisa Aronson and Martha Anderson (eds.), African Photographer J.A. Green: Reimagining the Indigenous and the Colonial, Indiana University Press, 2017.
Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa, Princeton University Press, 2019.
2017
Cécile Fromont, The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo, University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
Chika Okeke-Agulu, Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria., Duke University Press, 2015. Honorable mention.
Silvia Forni and Christopher Steiner (eds.), Africa in the Market: Twentieth-Century Art from the Amrad African Art Collection, ROM, 2015. Multi-authored publication.
Alisa LaGamma (ed.) Giulia Paoletti Karen E. Milbourne, Kongo: Power and Majesty, MET, 2015. Multi-authored publication.
2014
Allen Roberts, A Dance of Assassins: Performing Early Colonial Hegemony in the Congo, Indiana University Press, 2012 (single author category).
Marla Berns, Richard Fardon, and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir (eds.), Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley, UCLA Fowler Museum, 2011 (multiple authors category).
Peter Probst, Osogbo and the Art of Heritage: Monuments, Deities, and Money, Indiana University Press, 2011 (honorable mention).
Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visona (eds.), A Companion to Modern African Art, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013 (honorable mention).
2011
Jessica Winegar, Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture In Contemporary Egypt, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006 (single author category).
Honorable Mention:
Steven Nelson, From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum Architecture In and Out of Africa, Chicago University Press, 2007 (single author category).
Henry John Drewal, ed. Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and other Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora. , Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2008 (Multiple Authors).
Honorable Mention:
Christine Mullen Kreamer, Polly Nooter Roberts, Elizabeth Harney and Allyson Purpura, eds. Inscribing Meaning, Milan: 5 Continents Press, 2007 (Multiple Authors).
2007
Elizabeth Harney, In Senghor’s Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960-1995, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004 (One to Two Authors).
Sarah Nuttall, ed., Beautiful-Ugly: African and African Diaspora Aesthetics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press and The Hague: Prince Claus Fund Library, 2005 (Multiple Authors).
2004
Allen Roberts & Polly Nooter Roberts, A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2004 (One to Two Authors).
Gilane Tawadros & Sarah Campbell, eds., Fault Lines: Contemporary African art and Shifting Landscapes, ed. London: Institute of International Visual Arts in collaboration with the Forum for African Arts and the Prince Claus Fund, 2003 (Multiple Authors).
2001
Z.S. Strother, Inventing Masks: Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997 (One to Two Authors).
Doran Ross, et. al., Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African-American Identity, Los Angeles, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1998 (Multiple Authors).
1998
Veit Erlmann, Nightsong: Performance, Power, and Practice in South Africa, University of Chicago Press, 1996 (One to Two Authors).
Donald Cosentino, ed., Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, Los Angeles: University of California Los Angeles, Fowler, 1995 (Multiple Authors).
1995
Sarah Brett-Smith, The Making of Bamana Sculpture: Creativity and Gender, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994 (One to Two Authors).
1992
Enid Schildkraut & Curtis Keim, African Reflections: Art from Northeastern Zaire, Seattle:
University of Washington Press; New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1990.
1989
Suzanne Preston Blier, The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression, Cambridge University Press, 1987
Past Curatorial Excellence Award
2024
Africa-Based Exhibition Winner: Bernard Akoi-Jackson for Simply Iconic! Vintage Images off the Beaten Path at The Heritage Photo Lab in Accra
Large-Scale Exhibition Winner: Paul Basu for [Re]Entanglements: Colonial Collections in Decolonial Times at Museum of Archeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University
Small-Scale Exhibition Winner: Laura de Becker for Wish You Were Here: African Art and Restitution at University of Michigan Museum of Art
Shortlisted (in no particular order):
Andrea Gyorody and Matthew Francis Rarey for Afterlives of the Black Atlantic at Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College
Kevin D. Dumouchelle for Heroes: Principles of African Greatness at National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian
Rachel Kabukala for Radical Revisionists: Contemporary African Artists Confronting Past & Present at Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University
Tameka Ellington and Joseph L. Underwood for Textures: the history and art of Black hair at Kent State University Museum
Sandrine Colard for Congoville at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp
David M. Riep for Shattering Perspectives: A Teaching Collection of African Ceramics at Gregory Allicar Museum of Art at Colorado State University
2021
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
2017
Karen E. Milbourne, Earth Matters, National Museum of Africa 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.
Past Teaching Excellence Award
2024
Distinguished Teaching Award Winner: Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi, Emory University
Early/Mid-Career Teaching Award Winner: Genevieve Hill-Thomas, Ringling College of Art and Design
2021
Cynthia Becker, Associate Professor, Boston University
Henry Drewal, Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison