National Museums in Africa
National Museums in Africa

Author: Raymond Silverman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-08-31

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1000428648

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National Museums in Africa brings the voices of African museum professionals into dialogue with scholars and, by so doing, is able to consider the state of African national museums from fresh perspectives. Covering all regions of the continent, the volume’s thirteen chapters allow for a deep and nuanced understanding of the intricate interplay between past and present in contemporary Africa. Taking stock of the shifting museum landscape in Africa, with new players like China and South Korea challenging the conditions of cultural exchange, the book demonstrates that national museums are being rediscovered as important sites of political engagement and cultural negotiation. This is the first book to critically examine the roles national museums in Africa have played in the societies in which they are situated, but it is also the first to consider the roles that national museums might play in current debates concerning the restitution and repatriation of cultural patrimony taken from Africa during the colonial era. Informed by a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, this ground-breaking book will appeal to anyone interested in museums in Africa. It will be particularly useful to scholars and students working in the areas of museum and heritage studies, African studies, anthropology, archaeology, history, art history and cultural studies.

Representing Africa in American Art Museums
Representing Africa in American Art Museums

Author: Kathleen Bickford Berzock

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780295989617

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"The first comprehensive book to focus on the history of African art in American art museums. ... Thirteen essays present the institutional biographies of African art collections in the Cincinnati Museum of Art, the Hampton University Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Barnes Foundation, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Primitive Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Indiana University of Art Museum, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, the University of Iowa Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Menil Collection, and the National Museum of African Art."--back cover.

African Museums in the Making
African Museums in the Making

Author: Munyaradzi Mawere

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2015-04-03

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9956792713

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One of the central theoretical and practical issues in post-colonial Africa is the relevance, nature, and politics at play in the management of museum institutions on the continent. Most African museums were established during the 19th and 20th centuries as European imperialists were spreading their colonial tentacles across the continent. The attainment of political independence has done little to undo or correct the obnoxious situation. Most African countries continue to practice colonial museology despite surging scholarship and calls by some Afro-centric and critical scholars the world over to address the quandaries on the continents museum institutions. There is thus an unresolved struggle between the past and the present in the management of museums in Africa. In countries such as Zimbabwe, the struggle in museum management has been precipitated by the sharp economic downturn that has gripped the country since the turn of the millennium. In view of all these glitches, this book tackles the issue of the management of heritage in Zimbabwe. The book draws on the findings by scholars and researchers from different academic orientations and backgrounds to advance the thesis that museums and museology in Zimbabwe face problems of epic proportions that require urgent attention. It makes insightful suggestions on possible solutions to the tapestry of the inexorably enigmatic amalgam of complex problems haunting museum institutions in Zimbabwe, calling for a radical transformation of museology as a discipline in the process. This book should appeal to policy makers, scholars, researchers and students from disciplines such as museology, archaeology, social-cultural anthropology, and culture and heritage studies.

Begin with the Past
Begin with the Past

Author: Mabel O. Wilson

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Published: 2016-09-27

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1588345696

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Rising on the National Mall next to the Washington Monument, the National Museum of African American History and Culture is a tiered bronze beacon inviting everyone to learn about the richness and diversity of the African American experience and how it helped shape this nation. Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture is the story of how this unparalleled museum found its place in the nation’s collective memory and on its public commons. Begin with the Past presents the long history of efforts to build a permanent place to collect, study, and present African American history and culture. In 2003 the museum was officially established at long last, yet the work of the museum was only just beginning. The book traces the appointment of the director, the selection of the site, and the process of conceiving, designing, and constructing a public monument to the achievements and contributions of African Americans. The careful selection of architects, designers, and engineers culminated in a museum that embodies African American sensibilities about space, form, and material and incorporates rich cultural symbols into the design of the building and its surrounding landscape. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is a place for all Americans to understand our past and embrace our future, and this book is a testament to the inspiration and determination that went into creating this unique place.

Iké Udé: Nollywood Portraits
Iké Udé: Nollywood Portraits

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9788857232294

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The cinema of Nigeria, often referred to as "Nollywood" is a term coined in the mid-1990s to describe Nigeria's vibrant, film industry consists of movies produced in the country but watched all over Africa and largely by Africans in the diaspora. The history and development of the Nigerian motion picture industry is sometimes generally classified in four main eras: the Colonial era, Golden Age, Video film era and the emerging New Nigerian cinema. The book presents a selection of photographic portraits by Iké Udé depicting some of the major Nigerian actors and actress, television presenters, directors and producers: from Genevieve Nnaji, Alexx Ekubo and Kunle Afolayan to Gideon Okeke, Chioma Ude and Osas Ighodaro. With his ongoing photographic self-portraits, Nigerian-born Iké Udé explores a world of dualities: photographer/performance artist, artist/spectator, African/postnationalist, mainstream/ marginal, individual/everyman and fashion/art. As a Nigerian born, New York based artist, conversant with the world of fashion and celebrity, Udé gives conceptual aspects of performance and representation a new vitality, melding his own theatrical selves and multiple personae with his art.

Fragile Legacies
Fragile Legacies

Author: Amy J. Staples

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781907804991

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Fragile Legacies showcases the extraordinary photographs of Chief Solomon Osagie Alonge (1911-1994), one of Nigeria's premier photographers and the first official photographer to the royal court of the Benin kingdom. Alonge's photographs document a half-century of the Benin palace and the rituals, pageantry, and regalia of the obas (kings), and provide rare insight into the early histories and practices of studio photography in West Africa. His insider status provides an important perspective for examining the transformations of Benin City during the early to mid-twentieth century. --Front flap.

Museum Cooperation between Africa and Europe
Museum Cooperation between Africa and Europe

Author: Thomas Laely

Publisher: transcript Verlag

Published: 2018-07-31

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 3839443814

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At a time of major transformations in the conditions and self-conceptions of cultural history and ethnological museums worldwide, it has become increasingly important for these museums to engage in cooperative projects. This book brings together insights and analyses of a wide variety of approaches to museum cooperation from different expert perspectives. Featuring a variety of African and European points of view and providing detailed empirical evidence, it establishes a new field of museological study and provides some suggestions for future museum practice.

Rethinking Evolution in the Museum
Rethinking Evolution in the Museum

Author: Monique Scott

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-11-19

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1134135904

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Rethinking Evolution in the Museum explores the ways diverse natural history museum audiences imagine their evolutionary heritage. In particular, the book considers how the meanings constructed by audiences of museum exhibitions are a product of dynamic interplay between museum iconography and powerful images museum visitors bring with them to the museum. In doing so, the book illustrates how the preconceived images held by museum audiences about anthropology, Africa, and the museum itself strongly impact the human origins exhibition experience. Although museological theory has come increasingly to recognize that museum audiences ‘make meaning’ in exhibitions, or make their own complex interpretations of museum exhibitions, few scholars have explicitly asked how. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum, however, provides a rare window into visitor perceptions at four world-class museums—the Natural History Museum and Horniman Museum in London, the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Through rigorous and novel mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) covering nearly 500 museum visitors, this innovative study shows that audiences of human origins exhibitions interpret evolution exhibitions through a profoundly complex convergence of personal, political, intellectual, emotional and cultural interpretive strategies. This book also reveals that natural history museum visitors often respond to museum exhibitions similarly because they use common cultural tools picked up from globalized popular media circulating outside of the museum. One tool of particular interest is the notion that human evolution has proceeded linearly from a bestial African prehistory to a civilized European present. Despite critical growths in anthropological science and museum displays, the outdated Victorian progress motif lingers persistently in popular media and the popular imagination. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum sheds light on our relationship with natural history museums and will be crucial to those people interested in understanding the connection between the visitor, the museum and media culture outside of the museum context.