Dawn...

(View of Moonset over the Santa Monica mountains, 6.05am, January 30, 2010)

Critical Interventions Journal Number 5

Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, announces publication of CI#5, a special issue devoted to the North African artists' engagement with the discourse of Africanity. With this fifth edition and important milestone, Critical Interventions continues to focus on its goal of examining African art history's methodologies as a field of study, and the value of African cultural production in the global economy. Future issues will evaluate the question of Who Owns African Cultural Patrimony, the discourse of African Cinema, and an examinations of the role of Fractals in African visual design, guest edited by Audrey Bennett, and Ron Eglash--whose book on African Fractals revolutionized our understanding of African numbering systems, among other exciting topics.

Critical Interventions has been a unique project since its inception. Issued by Aachron Editions as part of the Aachron Knowledge Systems initiative, the journal aimed to provide a forum for investigating the value of African art/cultural knowledge in the global economy and its mediation protocols, reviewing in particular how this value is created, and the politics of the commodification of African artworks and of their reception. The journal thus inaugurates a formal discourse on the economics of African cultural patrimony as it affects African ownership of the intellectual property rights of its indigenous knowledge systems and forms of cultural practice. The issue of African ownership of its cultural patrimony is very important in a global context that has never recognized the claim of African peoples to their own bodies or natural resources. As recent events demonstrate (the debacle of Hurricane Katrina, the catastrophe of Haiti, and the general decimation of African aspiration through poverty--all of which can be blamed squarely on the marginalization of Africa in the global economy), it is important to revisit the issue of what scholarship accomplishes, in order to examine the overt and hidden costs of scholarship and its role in the production of value in the order of things.

In this year 2010, Critical Interventions will reorganize its publishing protocols to speed up production of each issue and also to revamp its website into a fully interactive online content delivery system. The new website will enable better engagement with our growing audience and also allow us to reach readers in parts of Global Africa who might otherwise not have access to the journal. As part of a larger revaluation of Aachron's corporate focus, we will also be making substantive changes in the management of the journal: John Peffer, who has assisted the journal in an editorial role, will be stepping down to focus on new projects. Critical Interventions therefore invites interested scholars whose work engages Global African Arts and Visual Culture to apply to the journal for Associate and Assistant Editor positions, and advanced graduate students for internships respectively (send applications to info@aachron.com).

The expanding volume of information poses major problems for publications in every sphere of academic work. The publisher therefore wishes to thank everyone who has contributed to the realization of this journal since its inception. We are humbled by the journal's survival in the face of very long odds but remain committed to its continued existence as a viable forum for important scholarly discourse on African art history. Happy new year and best wishes to everyone.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year 2010.
(Photograph: View of Los Angeles from the Getty Museum Complex)

In Memoriam: Lamidi Olonade Fakeye

The acclaimed Nigerian artist and preeminent wood sculptor, Lamidi Olonade Fakeye, passed away in Ile-Ife on Christmas. He has since been buried. I am besieged by death and have sat the past five days thinking about his passing, in this season of great losses, of friends, mentors and colleagues who have passed into the great beyond. There is no doubt Fakeye's fame will survive his death and only grow, but his passing leaves a great hole in our universe of eminent artists. He was known at home and abroad, and his fame rested on solid personal achievements: his skill in wood sculpture as one of the bearers of the 3000-year old Yoruba tradition of ONA, or great art (hence his name Olonade --the master artist is among us), which is revered among the Yoruba and their neighbors as evidence of divine blessing. Lamidi Fakeye was blessed and he shared his blessing selflessly with everyone he came into contact with. His works were full of grace and power, and astonished everyone by the supreme skill of the artist. I lament his passing, for we have not had time to do justice to his immense contributions to global contemporary art of his lifetime. And these are immense.

Olonade apoginifun, orun re o!
T'o ba d'ohun, ma j'ekolo
Oun ti won ba nje n'ibe ni k'o ba won je!

May his soul rest in peace.

Photograph of Fakeye courtesy of Prof. Benjamin Ray.

Appropriating Africa Redux

Here's an interesting NYTImes report on the new international appropriation of African culture, which is gaining grounds in places like London, New York and other parts of the world where local (read Western) designers are appropriating African cultural patterns for uses as varied as fashion, film and general design. As much as this kind of appropriation benefits African cultural producers, like Duro Olowu, the London-based fashion designer mentioned in the article, there is no indication that the New York Times (Ruth La Ferla) considered the economic impact of cultural appropriation. She mentions that in the previous (20th) century, Western artists like Picasso incorporated pan-African images and forms into their work but fails to note the result of this appropriation, which was that ALL modern and contemporary African art AFTER Picasso has been largely deemed mere mimicry of Western styles, even when African artists use cultural motifs and images from their own cultures. The reasoning was that Picasso (and other Western modernists) "discovered" African art and their use of African motifs and images invalidates any subsequent African experiments with the same forms (even when some European modernists merely copied African sculptures and presented these as modern art). The result of this inane assumption is that while even the least competent artwork by Picasso sells for millions of dollars, there is no sub-Saharan (black) African artist whose artworks sell for a million dollars apiece. Even the current darling black artist of the global art establishment --El Anatsui-- who has over thirty years of major professional practice and whose artworks are keenly sought after by most international museums, still finds his very complex and important artworks selling for mid-six figures. Consider in this regard that artworks by many young American or British artists with less that one-tenth of El's practice and international achievements sell routinely for more than he does.

We should thus understand that appropriation of African cultural properties is an economic issue with detrimental impact on African producers. There is no doubt that the current regime of cultural appropriation will achieve the same result as its predecessors (appropriation of African cultural and economic resources is a staple narrative of Western exegesis). The New York Times article mentions that much of the sudden focus on pan-African aesthetics derive from the concentration of Africans in Western Metropolises like London but also from the emergence of ARISE, a glossy international Africa-focused fashion publication that launched last year, published the Nigerian media magnate, Nduka Obaigbena of THIS DAY, who has done a lot to carve out a place for African cultural production in the realm of haute couture.

I think Obaigbena understands what I have been preaching on this blog for over two years now, that in the information age, you have to stake out your own intellectual property lest someone else appropriate it. And one has to do so urgently (by inserting such forms of cultural production into discourse) before foreign interests get the jump on you. Consider that many African countries (Cameroun is a prime example) do not even own the URL on their own names online. They have to pay other people who have registered these names for the right to use them. And so far, I have not heard of any court in the West that sees the evil in this kind of appropriation, or works to uphold African rights to their bodies or natural resources.

I should make clear that I am not opposed to global exchange of ideas, resources or cultures; I only insist that if such exchange remains one-sided (as it is in this dispensation where African culture and resources are freely available for appropriation but not vice versa), then we are not dealing with globalization but predatory imperialism. In that regard, I will end this year asking the same questions I asked at its beginning: what is Africa's share of this world we live in? Will African children ever see a future in which they do not exist merely as props for international charity organizations that feed fat on their misery? In an age where using even a small sound clip from any Western source could find you dragged into court for intellectual property violation, why is it legal for African intellectual properties to be appropriated freely without repercussions? Why exactly do we have this periodic appropriation of Africa which seems to recur in ten year cycles (I've written tons of stuff criticizing this tendency in exhibitions of African art: see "Exhibiting Africa:...").

I also don't wish to lay all the blame on the West. There is a very serious problem, which I have also earlier blogged about, on the unwillingness of Africans worldwide to understand the need to preserve and claim the intellectual property rights of their own cultural production, despite their proven prowess in this context. This is of course a very shortsighted but predictable condition of global African existence. We will wait until the new generation of Western fashion designers claim African motifs as their own and patent existing African patterns, before trying to secure these rights from them, by which time it will be too late. As my people say, if you don't lick your lips, the Harmattan dry winds will lick them for you. In the meantime, enjoy the new "discovery" of Africa by the New York Times. It is fleeting, and if you check back ten years from now, you will find they are writing on yet another new discovery, in the never ending cycle of Western imagining of Africa in which the continent is a perennially unknowable place. This recurrent pattern of discovery is also a ploy that allows African resources to be transferred to Western ownership. The discoverer gets credit for African resources, which is why Nyanza Nalubaale is currently known as Lake Victoria, named after the first white man that saw it, despite the fact that it had been named by African peoples who had lived on its shores for thousands of years.

Who owns African culture and why does Africa always get short-changed in the exploitation of its natural and cultural resources? This is a question to ponder as we end one year and head towards another decade entirely. The second decade of the 21st century is here and I predict this will be the great issue of the age.

Black History Month: Whose History, Whose Culture?

An interesting discussion on Black History Month in the United Kingdom, focused on whether Africans in Africa are getting enough knowledge of their own cultural heritage and how repatriation of African artworks held in the West might rekindle an interest in precolonial African heritage.

More on Herskovits Award

Click here for a link to a nice article published on the Nigerian Village Square by Moses Ochonu on my 2009 Herskovits Award.

Enwonwu book wins Herskovits Award 2009

My book, Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (University of Rochester Press, 2008) has won the 2009 Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association. The Herskovits Award is presented annually for the best scholarly work on Africa published in English in the previous year and distributed in the US.

CROWN FRAUD: Copyright and Looted Nigerian Cultural Patrimony

Above, a very interesting clip from YouTube featuring ongoing efforts to challenge and countermand Britain's claims of copyright ownership of looted Nigerian cultural patrimony. Basically, it concerns the British loot from the invasion of Benin in 1897. Like many other major museums in Europe and the USA who hold large collections of Benin Cultural Patrimony, the issue of who actually owns the copyright to such cultural patrimony is a hot issue. Not only do Western museums hold African art objects literally in bondage, they assert an ownership claim on the copyright of those objects. This is akin to double dispossession of the African producers of these artworks, who are denied physical ownership and also, through such claims to copyright ownership, denied ownership of the intellectual property rights of those artworks already lost to colonial adventurism.

Crown Fraud, a documentary film, raises a pertinent issue: the question of "Who Owns Africa's Cultural Patrimony" will be a major aspect of the intercultural relationship between Africa and the West for decades to come. In the meantime, let us state categorically on this blog that African cultures and societies who produced these artworks own any intellectual property rights that may accrue to the artworks. Any counter claim (of the sort the British Museum and other Western museums make on these artworks) is false and fraudulent, and completely illegal.

Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria

Video introduction to an ongoing exhibition of African royal art from the ancient Yoruba City of Ife. (Erratta: My previous entry on this video failed to correctly identify the person being interviewed: Enid Schildkrout, Chief Curator of the Museum for African Art, New York. Apologies).

Nollywood Lady: Peace Anyiam Fiberesima

From a press release by Women Make Movies:

NOLLYWOOD LADY, a new educational resource now available through Women Make Movies, plus a special offer for documentaries on African Cinema from the new special collection Behind the Lens: Women in Cinema.

Africa's film industry is one of the world's largest, third to only Bollywood and Hollywood. WMM's new release NOLLYWOOD LADY by Dorothee Wenner offers an insider's look into the vibrant film production hub of Lagos, Nigeria, and captures the vision of this thriving and innovative $250-million industry.

Leading this all-access tour to film locations, markets, and sit-downs with Nollywood professional is Peace Anyiam-Fibresima, an impresario of showbiz otherwise known as "Nollywood Lady," an ex-lawyer, producer, filmmaker, and the founder and CEO of the influential African Academy of Motion Pictures. In this revealing new release, she shares her vision for transforming the way Africans see themselves-and how the world sees Africans.

Above, a clip from the movie © Women Make Movies

Nollywood Actress Genevieve Nnaji featured on OPRAH

Nollywood Actress Genevieve Nnaji was featured on the Oprah Winfrey show yesterday in a segment about famous people from film and media industries outside the USA. In a way, this marks the emergence of Nollywood into global media and provides a fitting cap to the tireless work done by the Nollywood Foundation over the previous five years of hosting conventions about the Nigerian Film Industry in Los Angeles. As co-founder and current president of the Nollywood Foundation, I think we can take some pride in directing attention to Nollywood in the USA through our annual conventions. With Oprah's imprimatur conferring a status of "cool" on the industry, look for more stories on Nollywood in the American media over the next few months. Without prejudice, I predict those stories will attempt to assert a claim of discovering "Nollywood" for the American media, and will probably not take into consideration previous substantial work done by the Nollywood Foundation and other organizations that have battled tirelessly to make Nollywood a household name in the USA.

That said, congratulations to Genevieve Nnaji and to Nollywood-the Nigerian Film Industry. It is nice that they are recognized for their achievement and this particular achievement is quite substantial.

Pictures: Genevieve Nnaji at the 2006 Nollywood Foundation Convention. Video clip of Genevieve on Oprah

Osahenye Kainebi at CCA-Lagos

Trash-ing. New Works by Kainebi Osahenye
Opening: Saturday, 12th September 2009, 3pm
Exhibition continues till 10th October 2009

Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos is pleased to present an exhibition of new mixed media and painterly installations by acclaimed Lagos based artist Kainebi Osahenye. With over twenty years of artistic practice, this current incarnation Trash-ing builds on the continuous process of experimentation
which has pushed the boundaries of his painting.

Trash-ing signals a new departure from his well-known large-scale neo-expressionist paintings towards the incorporation of more conceptual concerns through a format that increasingly borrows from an installation
orientated process. Losing none of his gestural signature strokes, nor the luminosity of his colors or the edginess of his subject matter, Trash-ing highlights some of the issues that have pervaded his work for over a decade. In the recent works these existential, political, religious and everyday themes which habitually manifested with a degree of playfulness are presented less implicitly in favor of a suggestiveness which attests to the state of maturity he has attained in his career.

Osahenye moves seamlessly from the metaphysical to the physical, from the unreal to the real, foregrounding issues for which he is well-known and expanding on others such as globalization, consumerism, man’s inhumanity and the environment forming the entral(nodal) focus of this new body of work. In so doing the exhibition’s title succeeds in playing on the multiple connotations of the word to ‘trash’ to signify destruction, abuse, rejection and waste. It also serves as an explicit reminder on the one hand of man’s disregard for one other and on the other, towards the environment.

Using appropriation as a tool, Osahenye’s most ambitious work to date is the ceiling to wall installation titled ‘Casualty’, 2009. Made of thousand of beer cans, the work is less about the ‘trendy’ fad in recycling than in acknowledging the limitation of the traditional mode of painting whilst simultaneously recognizing the abilities and the possibilities of pushing boundaries without losing the essence of the painterly. On sighting the burnt cans near a garbage dump of a hotel in Auchi, Osahenye states that he ‘was instantly confronted with thoughts of war, cruelty, melancholy, pain, displacement, anguish and deformity and I started conceiving ways to install this large scale work to express the force and the power that I felt.’ Whether the totality of this and other works of the artist marks the beginning of the ‘new’ face of contemporary Nigerian painting remains to be seen.

Trash-ing is a collaboration between Kainebi Osahenye Studios and CCA,Lagos. The exhibition has been organized by CCA,Lagos Project Coordinator/Artist, Jude Anogwih.

www.ccalagos.org
www.facebook.com/ccalagos

Microsoft Photoshops Black Man Out Of European Ad

From the Huffington Post, this interesting evidence of the unstable location of black people in global space:

Doing business abroad sometimes requires companies to tweak their marketing strategies. Companies often swap idiomatic phrases or images in advertisements to better suit cultural sensitivities and achieve better sales. But do those edits ever go too far?

A black man was replaced with a white man in a Microsoft online advertisement intended for use in Poland. An Asian man in the ad apparently made the cut, and appeared in both the Polish and stateside versions of the ad.

The editorial tweak however forgot to photoshop out the black man's hand. Read the full story here. Pictured below, the original image and its doppelganger.

America is Changing--but are its art museums?

Interesting article from The Art Newspaper on the demographics of museum management in the USA:

Nobody seems to have any meaningful statistics. But you do not have to look at major US art museums for long to realize that most of the senior management is white, unlike staff at comparable levels in corporations, universities and government offices. When is this going to change? Those leading efforts to diversify museums say the economic reality of who pays to support institutions has not evolved sufficiently to require any lasting push for change. But American demographics are shifting swiftly. US minority groups will become the majority in a few decades. And art museums will have to diversify to survive.

Read the full article here.

Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles

The Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles (DFFLA: August 12-22, 2009) comes to a close today after a ten-day run. The Nollywood Foundation was represented at this event which opened with the acclaimed Spike Lee movie--Passing Strange and closes today with the West Coast premiere of Jackson 5 in Africa, a rare, never-before-seen documentary of Michael Jackson performing with his brothers in Senegal, Africa in 1974. Highlights of the DFFLA 2009 was a special African Cinema event showcasing two powerful documentaries: Jareth Mertz's sublime Soul of Ashanti and acclaimed director Euzhan Palcy's stunning Aime Cesaire: A Voice for History. The Africa Cinema event was sponsored by the Africa Channel and was a grand gala event. Below, posters for one of the numerous filmmaker receptions held at the event and the African Cinema event.

Hear Now, My Country

I have been mostly offline for over two months taking a break from blogging and trying to process momentous recent events in my life. In May 2008, after 16 years in the USA, I finally received American citizenship in a formal ceremony in Los Angeles. In June, I returned to Nigeria for summer research and made my first trip outside the USA on an American passport. The experience was surreally different and definitely blogworthy, given my extensive previous posts on questions of borders and access. I still don’t have the words to write up the experience but suffice it to say that it proves conclusively my earlier contention that the real and imagined borders that confront African (and black) travelers globally make mockery of the discourse of globalization. There is truly a First World and a Third World as there are immense efforts by powerful nations to ensure that neither the twain shall meet, except in the context of the rapacious and persistent exploitation of the Third World by the First World. But more on that later.

I thought I’d get back to blogging because I seem to have returned to a country I barely recognize, one tethered on the brink of a monumental disaster. I am not talking about the economic meltdown that signals the end of an age of consumption, whose toll on American eminence is yet to be tallied, though it may in part be the cause of this impending problem. In bad economic times, political problems bubble to the surface as the lubricating influence of cheap money vanishes and exposes fissures in society. I am talking about the madness (to put it mildly) of a Conservative minority increasingly tending towards lunacy. I am seeing a concerted effort by the right-wing to foment social upheaval and I think the government of President Obama doesn’t quite understand what it is up against. Under other circumstances, this wouldn’t really matter: it would all be politics. But there is a difference: commentators in major news outlets have speculated that the Obama ascendancy seemed to have driven arch Conservatives completely insane. This can be seen for example in militant efforts by the right wing to disrupt the free flow of ideas in various forms of public debate centered on health care. It is evident in the vituperative rhetoric of the right-wing media, which would, in many European countries, constitute hate speech. But it is even more evident in signs of increasing threats against the life of the President of the United States by right-wing activists.

This blog was prompted by the appearance of gun toting right wingers at various rallies on health care, and the appearance of a gun toting protester at a Presidential rally no less. Basically, a person who is not a law enforcement officer but who was openly sporting a handgun (albeit in a gun holster), was in the vicinity of the President of the United States, while holding up a placard that openly advocated political assassination in the service of “democracy”. AND HE WASN’T ARRESTED. This is a very dangerous development for a simple reason: it is in the interest of the country to ensure that that open threats against the life of the President are actively resisted but what we see happening is that threats are being made against the life of President Obama without any public concern other than inane commentary in the so-called mainstream news media. Well, I think it is important to firmly state the following: If any attempt is made against the life of President Obama, and if anything happens to him as a result of such attempt, the USA will not recover from the political and social disaster that will ensue.

Forget for a moment the fact that the President in question is the first African American president of the USA, though it speaks to the very heart of this issue. Forget also the country’s history of political assassination of both Presidents and significant African American leaders. Think instead of how the implied threat of violence encapsulated in the appearance of gun toting right-wingers at various political rallies completely undermines the very idea of free speech that protects their right to flaunt their violent opinions in public. In this atmosphere, I have been utterly astonished by the way this matter is being treated in the public space as a mere issue for debate as the right wing media continue to whip up storms of hatred in their constituents above and beyond insanity itself. (The gun-totting protester was promptly interviewed on national TV in the name of “fair and balanced” reporting, which increasingly makes mockery of the American news media in general).

The violent rhetoric is growing to the extent that well meaning commentators have found it necessary to point out its dangers. As E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post stated in his column, “try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?" I followed the virulent rhetoric that greeted President Obama’s run throughout his campaign. I have since observed closely the rising pitch of hate spewing from right wing outlets since his election. This hate is brewing irrationality and but it seems no one has any power to stop it since those who foment hate always hide behind the curtain of free speech. But what is the limit of free speech and why is it permissible to openly threaten the life of the President by appearing at his rallies with firearms? If this kind of action was not permissible under previous presidents, why is it permissible now? It is a tenet of security strategies that the main way to prevent dangerous threats is to deny them a platform for action. A lunatic fringe Republican right-winger shooting a gun at his own TV is permissible since a man’s home is his castle (though being in his own house did not prevent a rookie white police officer from arresting Prof. Gates recently). To allow such a person to show up at a Presidential rally without challenging him goes beyond the pale since you give them a chance to be in the vicinity of the President, in a situation where irrational behavior can easily lead to damaging action. It is always a straw that breaks the camel’s back. For over two hundred years, home grown terrorism against African American leaders have robbed the nation of some of its best and brightest. But they will not have this one: his detractors will flounder. I mean, how long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look?

It is in our collective interest to ensure that threats against the life of public officials are answered with appropriate force. However, Dionne further comments that White House spokespersons purported to be okay with the idea of gun-totting protesters. Eight months into his Presidency, I think it is time for President Obama to counter the irrational liberal leaning that permits his opponents to foment dissent and openly threaten his very being without repercussions. His desire for collective action and deliberation is already leading his most cherished programs down a path of doom (I predict here that unless the President takes radical action, his health care reform will be defeated and as the Republicans hope for, this defeat will literally kill his presidency: click here for analysis of the Republican game plan). No one denies that being the first African American president imposes the weight of history on him but he ran for the office and worn fair and square. We get it: he is a nice guy and would like us all to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. But it is clear some people are determined to remain outside of this circle of fellowship and common citizenship. This is the same kind of people that have sustained white supremacy over the ages and now agonize over the appearance of an African American president who they are busy turning into a toothless tiger through determined fundamentalist opposition. But President Obama is no coward: he is an audacious man who of late only appears to have forgotten who he is. There may be no greater story in American history than that of the African American who became the first non-white person of any ethnicity to ascend to the nation’s highest office. President Obama has already made history in this regard. He should now stop worrying about how perceptions of his race or liberal leanings might affect his actions and for God’s sake, wield the power of government that was entrusted to him. You can’t negotiate with lunatics or with people who are out to destroy you. If you do, you will end up doing their work for them. And if the President himself does not see the damage to his authority that emerges from unbridled challenges to his very existence, then perhaps we have waited in vain for his coming.

CFP: WHO OWNS AFRICA'S CULTURAL PATRIMONY?

Call For Papers

Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture
Fall 2010

WHO OWNS AFRICA’S CULTURAL PATRIMONY?

Critical Interventions invites submissions for a special issue on the question of Africa’s cultural patrimony in Western museums, especially in the context of recent international debates about repatriation of historical artworks relocated from one culture to another through conquest, colonization or looting. In the first decade of the 21st Century, demands by various countries for repatriations of significant artworks and cultural objects have shaken up established ideas about the ownership and location of historical cultural objects. While many Western museums have been willing to reach agreements about repatriating or compensating for culturally important artworks in their collections claimed by other Western countries, there has been no acknowledgment of the right of Africans to ownership of African artworks looted from Africa during colonialism, which are now held in the so-called “Universal Museums” of the West. Aside from the fact that Western museums hold large quantities of looted African artworks (the case of the British Museum’s holding of the Benin bronzes being a canonical case in point), these museums also appear to claim ownership of the cultural patrimony of these objects by enforcing copyright claims to the artworks. Since African artworks emerged as part of complex knowledge systems in various indigenous African cultures, such claims deprive Africans of any share in the economic value produced by these objects as a result of their redefinition as a canon of artworks with discursive and financial value. Western countries also routinely deny Africans access to these artworks through enforced localization (no Western country will grant an African a visa merely to visit any museum in Europe or America), which invalidates their claim of housing the artworks in “universal museums”.

To paraphrase Ivan Karp (1991) demands for recognition of Africa’s ownership of its cultural patrimony in Western museums assert the social, political, and economic claims of African producers in the larger world and challenge the right of established Western institutions to control representation of African cultures. In this regard, the proposed issue of Critical Interventions posits a fundamental question: who owns Africa’s cultural patrimony and why are African claims to their looted cultural objects held in Western museums denied in contemporary discourses of repatriation and reparations?

We seek papers that posit or contest African ownership of its cultural patrimony in the dual contexts of the relationship between African artworks in their contemporary locations (Western museums, Western private collections, the art historical construction of meanings), and the history of their origins as part of communities of objects, whose use in religious, ritual, secular, and social space formed part of knowledge systems and cultural heritage of particular African peoples. We particularly encourage submissions that interrogate the commodification of African cultural patrimony and cultural identities in the context of global capital, and examine the representational, legal, political, and cultural positions that support or deny African claims to ownership of historical art objects as relevant aspects of contemporary African cultural patrimony.

Please send articles (5000 to 9000 words preferred) and CV, by December 10, 2009, to the editors:
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie (ogbechie@arthistory.ucsb.edu)
John Peffer (j_peffer@yahoo.com)

Critical Interventions is a peer-reviewed journal of advanced research and writing on African art history and visual culture. Submission and subscription information can be found at www.criticalinterventions.com.

CRITICAL INTERVENTIONS, NUMBERS 3/4

Announcing the publication of

CRITICAL INTERVENTIONS: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture
NUMBERS 3/4: INTERROGATING AFRICAN MODERNITY

Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture announces the publication of issue Numbers 3/4 (Spring 2009): Interrogating African Modernity. The special double issue evaluates African modernist practices in art and visual culture, and uses interdisciplinary analysis to elicit new critical frameworks for interpreting modern African art's intersection with local and global discourses of modernity. Featured authors include (in order or appearance) Everlyn Nicodemus, Moyo Okediji, Hakim Abderezzak, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Gitti Salami, Jennifer Bajorek, Julie McGee, Afe Adogame, Nicholas J. Bridger, John Peffer, Monique F. P. Kerman, Manfred Zylla, Cornelius O. Adepegba, Francis Ugiomoh, and Peter Probst.

Subscriptions and subscription inquiries available at www.criticalinterventions.com

Summer Passing

London Heathrow, en route to Los Angeles. I am besieged by death this summer. Needing time to make sense of great losses.

And this, brief though it is, to the memory of my mentor, Martin Reinheimer, who passed away while I was away in Nigeria this summer.

Martin, a WWII veteran, was born in Germany. I met him in 1993 when I started my graduate studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He bought me my first laptop computer. In the acknowledgments for my book on Ben Enwonwu (which I could not have finished were it not that Martin provided me with free accommodations in Chicago for one year while I wrote my dissertation), I stated that he and his very dear wife, Lucy Reinheimer, were the closest things to parents I had in the USA and were the kindest people I know. Lucy took care of him in the house he built until he passed away, and with his passing, she is now perhaps the kindest person I know.

Martin "adopted" several foreign students at Northwestern and provided them with loving invitations for Thanksgiving and much assistance as they needed it. There are very successful people across Africa, Asia, and Europe who benefited from his kindness and who will equally mourn his death as I do.

I took the picture below in November 2008, when I made what now turns out to be my last visit to Martin in his Glencoe, Illinois residence. I am on the right in red turtleneck. Next to me is Lucy, Martin and Nnamdi Elleh, one of those foreign students like myself that Martin looked after as if he were his own son, as he looked after us all.

I am besieged by death this summer and I grieve for the passing of my mentor, Martin Reinheimer. May his soul rest in peace.