Keynote Lecture at AAH Annual Conference, University of Cambridge

 So, on April 10, 2026, I made a quick one-day trip to the University of Cambridge to give a Keynote Lecture at the Annual Conference of the Association for Art History. There, I spoke on a subject that anyone who has followed my activities for about a decade now may know: the restitution of many of Africa's significant cultural heritage held in imperial (aka, formerly Universal, but now Global) museums in Europe and the US. I explored how recent gestures of knowledge restitution in a few museums portend the making of what I call the postcolonial, global museum. The audience's applause at the end was, I must say, unusually looooong for an academic event! 

 You are welcome to the presentation of "Scale Boy" this fascinating memoir by the award-winning author Patrice Nganang. He will have a highlight conversation with my amazing colleague Eddie Glaude. Hosted by Africa World Initiative at Princeton. April 2, 2026.

For Congresswoman Ilhan Omar

Stand your ground

Against bullies

And small men

In big houses

Stand tall sista

Against bigots

And hegemons

From yesterday

© Chika Okeke-Agulu. Dec. 6, 2025

Artforum Best Books of 2025

By Jack Bankowsky, Thomas Crow, David Getsy, Andrea Gyorody, Nate Lippens, Sianne Ngai, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Purtill Family Business, Kathryn Scanlan, Barry Schwabsky, Ira Silverberg, Joe Westmoreland, John Yau, Mi You

My Selection: Dan Hicks, Every Monument Will Fall: A Story of Remembering and Forgetting (Hutchinson Heinemann. 592 pages)

How times change. In 2002, the directors of several of the largest museums in Europe and the United States, among the most consequential and revered voices in scholarship, told us that the so-called universal museums had a kind of manifest destiny to keep the best examples of the world’s art and cultural heritage in perpetuity; never mind that a good portion of them were taken through spectacular acts of military violence, diplomatic subterfuge, suspicious bargains, ingenious chicanery, and simple or elaborate theft. The defenders of institutions mostly forged by imperialism had reason to raise the ramparts against the advancing hordes from the postcolony. In 2020, Dan Hicks, the British archaeologist and curator at Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum, a veritable insider, fired a discursive bazooka against imperial collections in his wickedly titled book The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, focusing his lens on looted treasures of the Benin Kingdom held in British museums. That book called for the return of everything in museums that had been stolen or looted by agents of empire and their accomplices to their original owners. Now, in his latest book, Hicks wields his critical sledgehammer against one of the most visible subjects of the contemporary culture wars: monuments.

As the book’s title proclaims, “Every monument will fall.” What does Hicks mean by this? Well, it’s complicated. Like the dogged archaeologist he is, Hicks meticulously digs through the layered and fraught histories of monumental sculptures and structures built by empire’s agents and institutions for self-perpetuation, often at the expense and in suppression of subject peoples’ imaginaries and aspirations of selfhood. Then, he proposes the deconstruction—or, better, demolishing—of the logic, politics, and ideologies behind the creation, maintenance, and mythologizing of hegemonic monuments and their enabling institutions. In this passionate and searing call for cleansing the hurtful and oppressive accretions of history that we call monuments, Hicks pulls no punches.

Chika Okeke-Agulu

 

HE Yemi Osinbajo to give the 3RD Africa World Lectures at AWI, Princeton, Nov. 13

Yemi Osinbajo, Photo courtesy, Mo Ibrahim Foundation

His Excellency, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the immediate past Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, will give the 3rd Africa World Lecture at Princeton University on Nov. 13, 2025. Since his tenure in Abuja, Osinbajo, an ardent advocate for innovation as driver of African development and futures, has keep a busy international profile. One of his most consequential recent appointments is his role as the Guardian of the UNDP-supported Timbuktoo African Innovation Foundation. He is presently leading the international election monitoring mission for the presidential elections in Cote d'Ivoire this month. The previous lecturers were the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who gave the inaugural lecture (2023), and the Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah (2024). To register for the lecture and for online access, visit the Africa World Initiative website. 

On the Louvre Museum Robbery

I sympathize with the people of France for the theft of several objects of great value to their nation. This is a terrible thing. I understand that these objects were commissioned by their past rulers for themselves and their wives, though they have since become part of their national patrimony. So, when French commentators say that the theft of these treasures is like the stealing of France’s soul, I get it.

Two things though.

First, I hope the people of France, in the wake of this national hurt, can now understand what if feels like to have national treasures of West African societies looted by French agents in the age of empire, just a few generations ago. I hope they (and their European cousins) can understand the hurt they caused the people of Asante, Dahomey, Benin, etc., whose entire national treasures they carted away and now kept in their museums for the delight of their visitors.

Second, I hope the people of France can now see the hollowness, or rather insensitivity of reminding Africans ad nauseam how unsafe their museums and palaces are and, following from that, why Europe’s great museums are the only institutions fit for storing and displaying the world’s art and cultural heritage. Two years ago, it was the British Museum, this week, the Louvre. Are these museums safe places to keep Africa’s and the world's captive treasures?

Anyway, I hope they return the stolen treasures.

We all hurt.