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----------------------------------------------- University of Michigan Symposium Visualizing Africa: New Perspectives on Art, History and Culture University of Michigan Museum of Art Saturday, September 14, 2002 9:30 am - 5:00 pm Sponsored by the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, the Department of the History of Art, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art Participants - Ikem Okoye (University of Delaware) "Sculpture/Architecture/Constructed Space/Landscape: An Encounter between Southern Nigerian 'Objects' and the History of Art." - John Picton (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) "Lagos Island to the Picasso Bar, or how African art is as African artists do." - Christopher Steiner (Connecticut College) "Africa Redux: Authenticity and Repetition in Visual Culture." - Zöe Strother (University of California, Los Angeles) "Dancing a Topic to Death: After 100 years of research, what do we really know about masquerade in Africa?" Still a relatively young discipline founded in the late 1950s, African art history is currently in a state of flux. Until recently, the "traditional arts" have been the focus of art historical inquiry, and ethnology has served as the dominant methodological approach for interpreting African visual culture. But the field is changing. Today modern and contemporary art are being given considerable attention, and new interpretive paradigms are being employed - postmodern and postcolonial discourse have had a significant impact on the field. African art history is redefining itself. Our day-long symposium, "Visualizing Africa", has been conceived as a forum for presenting new perspectives and methodologies in African art history, and for discussing some of the issues that confront the field. Four of the field's leading scholars - Ikem Okoye, John Picton, Christopher Steiner and Zoë Strother - have been invited to present papers that consider aspects of their current research. The morning and early afternoon will be devoted to the presentation of these papers. Later in the afternoon, some of the issues raised in these papers will serve as the basis for a roundtable discussion, moderated by UM art historian Raymond Silverman, that will consider the state of the field of African art history. Questions that will frame the discussion may include . . . - What is the nature of African art history as a discipline and what is its relationship to the general field of art history, especially "Western theory"? - Is there any meaningful distinction between an art-historical approach to African art and an anthropological one? - Do African's know art? If so, what is the nature of this knowledge and where is it deposited? How can scholars access this body of knowledge? - Do African artists get asked the same questions as Western artists? Should they? - Why does ethnicity continue to serve as the dominant and defining social paradigm in the study of art in Africa? - Why do "traditional" and "contemporary" serve as the dominant temporal paradigm for the field? Is there any way to break out of this modernist binary? The day will end with a reception in Tappan Hall to which all symposium attendees are invited. The symposium is free and open to the public. For more information phone 734-764-5400. -- H-MUSEUM H-Net Network for Museum Professionals E -Mail: h-museum@h-net.msu.edu WWW: http://www.h-museum.net
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
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