Gold-plated iPhones @ Nigerian President's Daughter's Wedding

Gold-plated iPhones presented to guests at the wedding of Faith Jonathan and Godswill Edward, yesterday. Faith is the daughter of Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan. Blog reports indicate that Faith received more than 60 exotic cars from "well-wishers," many of them political insiders and government contractors (isn't that enough to establish a high-end car dealership?). 

So now you see how Nigeria's wealth is spent? Nothing this government will say or do will convince me that it is remotely interested in doing anything about the culture of corruption that has kept Nigeria from becoming a truly livable and progressive nation. No amount of human resources (which it has in abundance) or runaway religiosity (everything is blamed on "...luck, Faith and; God's will", pun intended!), or foreign investment due to the re-based GDP will do it, with the perverse and pervasive predatory materialism of supposedly elected officials. I don't mind if these people waste money they actually earned; it is the knowledge that much of this decadence is paid for with stolen public funds. Even more depressing is that you would find millions there in Nigeria who'd justify the wedding gifts! Who else, they'd ask you, should receive or give such fabulous gifts but the President's daughter? That tells you what both the rulers and the ruled think about the commonwealth, and why public corruption is a Nigerian way of life.

The Barnes Foundation and The Brothers Network

I give a shout out and express my appreciation to Gregory Walker the organizer of Brothers Network for the impressive audience at my lecture on the work of Yinka Shonibare this afternoon at the Barnes Foundation. (The Barnes is hosting Yinka's fabulous Magic Ladders exhibition, which closes on April 21). It was so refreshing to have so many of one's kind attend such an event in a venue like the venerable Barnes. I hope that this won't be the last time institutions like the Barnes would collaborate with the group. What struck me was not so much the turn out for my lecture but in fact the followup event at Brothers Network: a conversation between two artists Cosmo White and Curlee Holton. I cannot remember the last time I witnessed, within and outside the academy, a more spirited and informed discussion about an artist's work. If this is the kind of events the BN puts together, I am now calling for many more of such networks across America. It tells me that there are many black professional women and men who wish to participate in serious conversation about art and culture but who do not have the right forum to nurture such desire. I will surely return to this subject later. But for now, thanks to Judith Dolkart (who organized Magic Ladders) and her team at the Barnes for involving the BN; and many more thanks to Walker for the establishing the Network. 

With Curlee Holton (3rd L) Cosmo White (c) and members of the Brother Network and guests

Brothers Network (and some of their guests) in front of Shonibare's exhibit. Walker is the tallest fellow in the picture!

The brilliant Higgins Twins (Atamanu and Atamosi) performing at the Brother's Network program. They are both juniors at Julia Reynolds Masterman School and are part of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra. 

Cosmo White and Curlee Holton discussing Shonibare's work at the Brothers Network program. White is an MFA student at Univ. of Michigan; Holton is Founding Director of the Center for Experimental Printmaking at Lafayette College and Acting Executive Director for the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African American and African Diaspora at the Univ. of Maryland 

"African American Art Scholarship: A Condition Report" @ Princeton University

The Center for African American Studies, Princeton University will host a panel discussion: "African American Scholarship: A Condition Report," featuring Huey Gene Copeland II (Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Northwestern University), Erica Moiah James (Assistant Professor, Department of History of Art, Yale University) and Naomi Beckwith (Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago). The discussion will be moderated by Chika Okeke-Agulu (Associate Professor, Department of Art & Archaeology and Center for African American Studies, Princeton University). Key themes include the raison d'etre, strategies as well as challenges of producing scholarship (as texts and exhibitions) in the field of African American and African Diaspora today.

Venue: 106 McCormick Hall
Time: 6:30--8:00PM

The panel anticipates this year's "Reflections on African American Studies," The Center for African American Studies annual lecture series, given on April 24 by Richard J. Powell (Duke University). It also serves as a rehearsal for a major e-roundtable discussion on the subject to be convened later this year.

This event is open to the Public.

El Anatsui now Royal Academician!

El Anatsui, RA (Hon)

Congratulations to my friend, mentor, teacher El Anatsui who two days ago became a member of the Royal Academy. Will talk about this later in this or in my other platforms. For now, I can only say: El jide ka iji!

Amanda Gilvin (moderator), El and Obiora

Yes, the conversation last night between Obiora and El was everything I hoped for, and more. Heard it was the biggest event (per attendance) at Mount Holyoke since their last commencement! An auditorium seating several hundreds was filled, and there was another large hall from where a spill-over audience watched via remote video. Thanks once more to my dear friend John Stomberg, the Florence Finch Abbott Director of the Mt. Holyoke College Museum of Art for hosting this event. It meant a lot to me!

John Stomberg welcomes El and Jack Shainman (El's gallerist), left

John with this hilarious make-believe book--Encyclopedia of Everything--during his theatrical introductory remarks

Section of the audience

2nd left, Sheri Fafunwa-Ndibe (Professor of Art, Central Connecticut State Univ) and center, Okey Ndibe, novelist and author of Foreign Gods, Inc.

Roland Abiodun, Obiora Udechukwu, moi, El Anatsui, Ugochukwu Smooth Nzewi, Olabode Omojola,

And talking about this picture above. It brought back memories of Nsukka--yes Nsukka is now a place of memory. Roland Abiodun (John C. Newton Professor of History of Art and Black Studies, Amherst College) was for a long time external examiner for the Nsukka Art department's honors thesis and degree exhibition; Obiora Udechukwu (Charles A. Dana Professor of Art and Art History, St. Lawrence Univ.) and El Anatsui, for many years respectively led the painting and sculpture program at Nsukka; while Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi (Curator of African Art, at Dartmouth College's Hood Museum) and Olabode Omojola (Five College Associate Professor of Musicology, Mt. Holyoke College) were respectively alumni of the Nsukka Fine Arts and Music programs. 

Simon Njami's "Divine Comedy" exhibition at MMK, Frankfurt am Main

Moataz Nasr, Dome, 2011 

(all images copyright of the artists)

Edson Chagas, TIPO PASS, Filipe D. Kuangana, 2012

Aida Muluneh, The 99 Series, 2013 ©

Simon Njami's large, themed exhibition, "Divine Comedy" recently opened at MMK museum in Frankfurt, Germany, and is worth checking out. Having previewed the show for Artforum, I am curious to see how Njami managed to fit the incredibly diverse practices of the fifty-one invited artists, into the show's three rubrics--"Heaven, Hell & Purgatory"--based on the Divine Comedy the monumental poem by Dante, the Italian/Florentine medieval poet. Does the show produce fascinating and smartly fresh juxtapositions of the mostly already-existing works by many of the major names? Or does it come across as merely using a conceptual interest in the ancient Italian poet's apocalyptic vision to convene another unwieldy contemporary
African art survey? This is a must-see show!

Here's a link to the show's page on MMK's website: The Divine Comedy

El Anatsui and Obiora Udechukwu in Conversation, April 3

On April 3, Mt. Holyoke College Museum of Art will host a historic event: a public conversation between El Anatsui and Obiora Udechukwu who for many years were the masters, respectively of the sculpture and painting studios at Nsukka. They took the idea and vision of Uche Okeke the legendary founder of the Nsukka School, and turned them into the fertile ground from which grew an amazing number of artists and scholars that have made their mark in today's art world: Tayo Adenaike, Ndidi Dike, Olu Oguibe, Sylvester Ogbechie, Krydz Ikwuemesi, Marcia Kure, Nnenna Okore, Ugochukwu Smooth Nzewi, Bright Eke, Emeka Ogboh, Ozioma Onuzulike, and many others.

One reason I very much look forward to this event--apart from getting together with my favorite teachers and former colleagues in my days as a young teacher at Nsukka!--is that Udechukwu is one artist-scholar that has known Anatsui more than anyone else out there. (I still return to his short but perceptive 1982 essay in a catalog for one of Anatsui's earliest solo exhibitions). And Udechukwu has, since their years as young artist-teachers at Nsukka, and as Anatsui's work took to the stratosphere, recorded many of their conversations, as a part of his incredible archives of interviews with artists, novelists, poets, critics that shaped modern/contemporary Nigerian art...But this one, at this stage in their careers, is something special.

I cannot thank enough John Stomberg, director of the MHCMA, for supporting, and making this even possible.

The conversation will be moderated by exhibition co-curator and Five College Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in African Art and Architecture, Amanda Gilvin.

Thursday, 3 April
5:30 p.m.

Gamble Auditorium, Mount Holyoke College
Free and open to the public
Reception to follow

El Anatsui's exhibition, El Anatsui: New Worlds, is ongoing at the MHCMA, until June 14.

Funeral (for Victor Nwoye-Atu, Cousin)

Ah, it is spring again
And in my mother's garden
Sunbirds and moths dance
On pungent toadstools

Sure, winter has scarred the land
On its way to the North Pole
By why another blood sacrifice
On the heath of anxious gods?

Yes, indeed, the spring has come
But why must we pound the earth
Just to frighten the rain?