Exhibiting Africa: Art, Artifact and New Articulations

Monique Scott, History of Art 279, Wednesdays 2-4 p.m.,
Canaday Library Seminar Room 205, Bryn Mawr College

At the turn of the 20^th century, the Victorian natural history museum played an important role in constructing and disseminating images of Africa to the Western public.  The history of museum representations of Africa and Africans reveals that exhibitions—both museum exhibitions and “living” World’s Fair exhibitions— has long been deeply embedded in politics, including the persistent “othering” of African people as savages or primitives. While paying attention to stereotypical exhibition tropes about Africa, we will also consider how art museums are creating new constructions of Africa and how contemporary curators and conceptual artists are creating complex, challenging new ways of understanding African identities.

Students will learn:

• The tensions between African art and African artifact
• The historical politics embedded in representations of Africa
• How visual representations produce and validate knowledge about culture
• The process of “meaning-making” in museums
• The inter-textuality between different modes of representing Africa
• How critical new constructions of Africa are being produced by museums, art galleries and in the public sphere

 Expectations

If you choose to take this course, please be aware that you will be expected to:

• Uphold the Bryn Mawr Honor Code

• Be active, engaged participants in the classroom and in museum visits

• Demonstrate a high degree of independence, responsibility, and intellectual resourcefulness  in all of your work, both collaborative and individual

Campus Resources

Special Needs/Access Services:  Students who think they may need accommodations in this course because of the impact of a learning, physical, or psychological disability are encouraged to meet with me privately early in the semester to discuss their concerns. Bryn Mawr students should also contact Deb Alder, Coordinator of Access Services (610-526-7351 or dalder@brynmawr.edu), as soon as possible, to verify their eligibility for reasonable academic accommodations. Haverford students should contact Gabriela Moats, Coordinator of Accommodations, Office of Disabilities Services at hc-ods@haverford.edu. If you have alreadybeen approved to receive academic accommodationsand would like to request accommodations in this course because of a disability, please meet with me privately at the beginning of the semester (within the first two weeks if possible) with your verification letter.

Academic Support and Learning Resources: Students are encouraged to reach out to the Academic Support and Learning Resources Specialist to explore effective learning, studying, test-taking, note-taking and time and stress management strategies that are essential to success in this course and college life.  Students can schedule a meeting with Rachel Heiser, the Academic Support and Learning Resources Specialist by calling the Dean's Office at (610)526-5375. For more information, please visit this site: http://www.brynmawr.edu/deans/acad_support/learning_resources.shtml

Office of Academic Resources (OAR): Located at Haverford in Stokes Suite 118, the OAR offers students many resources, including  communal study spaces, peer tutoring, workshop series, and individual coaching with the center’s trained staff. See their website for more information http://www.haverford.edu/oar/.

Writing Center: The Writing Center offers free appointments and experienced peer tutors who are there to help you at any stage of the writing process. The Writing Center is located in Canaday Library. You can get more information at www.brynmawr.edu/writingcenter.

Canaday Library and Magill Library: The library provides help with research, multimedia and technology. Email Olivia Castello  (ocastello@brynmawr.edu) or Margaret Schaus (mschaus@haverford.edu) to ask questions or make a research appointment.

360 "The Poetics and Politics of Race: Querying Black and White”

OVERVIEW & EXPECTATIONS

This course is part of a 360 course on the “Poetics and Politics of Race.” The goal of this 360 is to unpack how meaning is made from representations of race—from artifacts in an anthropological context, to representations in literature, to how people teach and learn. "The Poetics and Politics of Race: Querying Black and White” will interrogate racial constructions  – including the black-white binary – through an investigation of how different cultural practices play out and play into one another. 

• How did 19th century anthropology authorize racial categories we’re still wrestling with today? 
• How have classical American literary texts represented the intersection of blackness and whiteness? 
• Given this history of racial construction and representation, how might contemporary educators recognize and work with issues of race, difference, and power in what and how we teach?
• Building on these understandings, how might we create constructive and critical new contemporary meanings of difference?  

The central queries of this 360 will take us to a variety of cultural practices, including the creation of art and its representation in museums and other public spaces; the interpretation of literature and its role in constructing culture; and the classroom as a space where these practices can be reproduced, questioned and challenged.  Students will learn to unpack and be conscious critically of our overlapping and distinct histories, and to consider other possibilities in the very present subject of race, as we work together to curate alternative articulations of African art and artifacts on the Bryn Mawr campus.  Students will critically understand and analyze how exhibitions produce knowledge of race; develop skills in close reading and interrogation of literary texts; and consider how teaching and learning offers opportunities to discern, critique and design new understandings of race. 

During the first half of the course, students will visit several museums to explore different ways of exhibiting African and African American culture, particularly the "Creative Africa" exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The "Creative Africa" offers a unique opportunity for students to investigate how audiences respond to different categories of African objects on display--from the traditional anthropological artifacts to contemporary artistic expressions such as photography.  During the second half of the course, students will research, curate and mount an exhibit at Bryn Mawr. This will call upon the art and artifact collection and curatorial expertise in the Bryn Mawr Special Collections.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1)    Class Participation (25%):  Students are required to attend class, do all of the required readings and assignments and actively participate in on-site and off-site discussions based on their readings of the assigned material. Consistent attendance is essential to your progress and participation.  Students must provide a valid explanation for any missed classes.

All students are responsible for posting one “blog” post on the Sunday following each museum visit (the first 6 Fridays of the course). Students are responsible for providing a thoughtful response to the on-site museum experience and how it connects to the class discussions at large.

2)    Discussion Leader/Response Paper (25%)

Each week that we are in the classroom, one student will serve as the discussion leader.  This student has the significant sole responsibility of distilling and sharing the main learnings from the assigned section of readings with the class. That student will write a 2-3 page response paper to the readings—a critical, academic response to the reading with a section of bulleted take-away points.  The student should also pull any key quotes from the reading. The paper must be posted by the Sunday (at midnight) prior to the class. The discussion leader is also are required to guide and moderate the in-class discussion of the readings. The discussion leaders are encouraged to share any additional provocative issues, themes or relevant links on the blog for the class to review in advance.

3)    The Mid-Term: Collections Research (25%)

Students will choose one “object” from the Special Collections African art and artifact collection. Research will be conducted on TriArte, as well as in consultation with Collections Manager, Marianne Weldon, and Archivist, Christiana Dobzhanski. Write a: 1) 1-2 page description of the search process (what you found/didn’t found); and 2) Share your findings with the 360 team on Friday, October 21. 

4)    The Final Project: Exhibition Design + Essay  (25%/Immeasurable):

Students will design an exhibition on “Race and Representation” for the Bryn Mawr College Community. As part of that exercise, students will research the African artifact collection held in the Special Collections of Bryn Mawr. Students will work with BMC curators and collections managers to understand the history of the objects and their exhibition possibilities. Students will gain practical experience in the production of an exhibition: conceiving a curatorial approach, articulating themes, designing gallery layout and marketing and programming. Students are also collectively responsible for the final version of the exhibition theme, objects, wall text and accompanying programing. Write a 2-3 page self-reflective essay on the process of mounting an exhibition.

READINGS

Bickford, K and Clarke, C. 2011. Representing Africa in American Art Museums: A Century of Collecting and Display. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Cooks, B. 2011. Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum. University of Massachusetts Press: Boston.

Coombes, A. 1996. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. Yale: New Haven.

Geismar, H. 2015.“The Art of Anthropology: Questioning Contemporary Art in Ethnographic Display.” The International Handbooks of Museum Studies: Museum Theory First Edition. Edited by Andrea Witcomb and Kylie Message. John Wiley and Sons: New York. (as PDF)

Gonzalez, J. Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art. MIT Press: Cambridge.

Lindfors, B. ed., 1999. Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Price, Sally.  1989. Primitive Art in Civilized Spaces. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Vogel, S. 1988. Art/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections. Prestel: New York.     

(as PDF)

Wilson, F. and D. Globus. 2011. Fred Wilson: A Critical Reader. Ridinghouse: London.

(as PDF)

WEEKLY ASSIGNMENTS

8/31     Week 1: Course Overview/Africa Art/Artifact

9/7        Week 2: Africa Art/Artifact

                  Presentation 1 (2 students)

___________________________________________________________________________________

Part I: History of Exhibiting African Bodies, African Objects

9/14     Week 3:  Reinventing Africa

                  Presentation 2 (2 students)

9/21     Week 4:  Kris Graves talk and Exhibition

Lecture & Lunch (Thomas 224): 12:30-2:00

                  Kris Graves: The Testament Project

Kris Graves exhibits selections from his series The Testament Project, a collection of photographs, videos, and testimonials aimed to represent and explore blackness in contemporary America. http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/exhibits/KrisGraves.html

9/28     Week 5: Africans on Stage

                  Presentation 3(2 students)

___________________________________________________________________________________

Part II: African Artifact to African Art

10/5     Week 6: Primitive Art in Civilized Spaces

Presentation 4 (2 students)

10/12: FALL BREAK

10/19 Week 7: African American Museum of Philadelphia

i found god in myself: the 40th anniversary of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls his two gallery art exhibit celebrates the 40th anniversary of the choreopoem/play for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, and is curated by Souleo Wright.

http://www.aampmuseum.org/calendar.html

10/26                   Week 8:  Art/Artifact/New Articulations: Major Institutions

Presentation 5 (3 students)

11/2     Week 9: Art/Artifact/New Articulations: Private Collectors and University Museums

Presentation 6 (2 students)

11/9     Week 10: Art/Artifact/New Articulations

Presentation7 (2 students)

11/16 Week 11: African-Americans and the American Art Museums

Presentation 8 (2 students)

11/23                   THANKSGIVING

11/30 Week 12: Reflections

12/7     Week 13: Reflections