Global Arts of Guinea, West Africa

Catalog description

Designed as a curatorial practicum, this seminar builds expertise for academic and museum careers in African/diaspora and postcolonial art history. It delves into globally circulating arts from the Republic of Guinea (Guinea-Conakry), West Africa, as a means of honing curatorial research and writing; engaging with key topics in museum studies; and developing the intellectual versatility needed to deal responsibly with this complex art history (early 20C-present). It may be generally convenient to place African arts in set categories, whether as determined by culture and geography (ethnic/national, African/diaspora) or by medium and period or type (traditional, popular, modern, contemporary). But artistic practices rarely conformed to such demarcations. Fodeba Keita (1921-1969), a central figure in Guinean art history who is today best remembered, via Frantz Fanon, as an exemplary literary producer of "national culture," was active around the world across multiple domains: music, poetry, theater, dance, politics. Only in 1960 did Keita's Paris- and Dakar-based internationally touring performance company, Les Ballets Africains, relocate to Conakry to become the top ensemble in Guinea's socialist-inspired national arts system. That system mandated participation for all youth and transferred many ethnically specific art forms - notably masks and masquerade - to the national stage. When the socialist period ended in 1984, state arts patronage dwindled and many artists left for cities in Europe, the Americas, Japan, and elsewhere, inaugurating a contemporary phase in the historical evolution of global Guinean arts. The seminar will involve close study of objects in the Cantor Center and other collections; guest appearances by specialists; reading across periods, art forms, and disciplines; and workshopping short curatorial writing assignments. Final projects can take the…