Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My take on auctions and contemporary African Art in today's New York Times

Dear All:

 

In every field of study and endeavor, there are giants (or elephants) and, of course, rodents! In the Art World, we make way for the jegedes (Prof), Okeke-Agulus, Anatsuis and others ( as Elephants) to make their voices heard. So, hearing from Professor Emeritus Professor jegede, in response, to the brilliant piece by Princeton Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu does say it all.

 

Indeed, when my spouse and I read the piece in NYT, "Modern African Art Is Being Gentrified", we immediately saluted Professor Okeke-Agulu (Chika) for making it big in NYT with the brilliant art piece. Of course, from the original piece in the Sunday Review section of NYT, there are two pictorial illustrations: of "Drifting Continents" (2009) by El Anatsui, the Ghanaian artist; and then "How to Blow Up Two Heads at Once (Ladies; 2006) by Yinka Shonibare, the British-Nigerian artist. My spouse, out of curiosity, asked me: "Why have two female heads blown at once by women, but not heads of two men blown out by men?"  As my legendary and quotable mentor (Baba Ijebu) would explain: "Maybe, it is part of the gentrification. Is that not be so, abi?"!

 

Many thanks to Professor Okeke-Aguku, for putting Sotheby's auction of works by artists from our beleaguered continent on the map of today's "Trump World" and, also, many thanks to Professor Emeritus jegede for creating a "forest dance" around the published NYT piece.

 

And, as VC Aluko would have ended a response: "There you have it"!

 

A.B. Assensoh.

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of jegede, dele <dele.jegede@miamioh.edu>
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2017 9:54 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My take on auctions and contemporary African Art in today's New York Times

 

I congratulate Chika Okeke-Agulu for his excellent piece in NYT. He makes the point quite persuasively: Africa is doomed to repeat history if it fails to learn from it. But it is not all gloom and doom. To the examples that he cites—in DRC and South Africa—we can add that of Pan-Atlantic University in Lagos, Nigeria, to which Omoba Yemisi Shyllon, a major collector, has donated a substantial chunk of his collections. Additionally, he has also committed to building an art museum on the university campus.

It is important to note that the interest that Sotheby's and other major auction houses have now begun to show in African art is due substantially to the efforts of African scholars like Chika who have assiduously opened up hitherto protected channels—through monographs, essays in journals, curatorial work, and teaching in Euro-American outlets and spaces. Too, it is gratifying to note that while Euro-American scholars pioneered the scholarship of "traditional" African art, which in turn legitimized the "collection" or, to be frank, rapacious looting of the material culture of African peoples, the narrative of modern and contemporary African art is shaped substantially by African scholars.

Ongoing trends regarding the production, collection, and promotion of modern and contemporary African art suggest that we must lower our hopes and dependency on governments to provide any leadership in establishing and funding viable art museums in Africa. The future in this area lies in the hands of individuals and private enterprises.

dele jegede

dele jegede, Ph.D
Professor Emeritus
Miami University. Oxford. OH

Art Historian. Painter. Cartoonist. Curator

dele-jegede.com

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 4:49 AM, Chika Okeke-Agulu <okekeagulu@gmail.com> wrote:

This Opinion piece in NYT Sunday Review was prompted by last Tuesday's inaugural modern and contemporary African Art auction by Sotheby's:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/opinion/sunday/modern-african-art-sothebys.html

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