Biafra

"I have seen things in Biafra this week no man should have to see. Sights to search the heart and sicken the conscience. I have seen children roasted alive, young girls torn in two by shrapnel, pregnant women eviscerated, and old men blown to fragments. I have seen these things and I have seen their cause; high-flying Russian Ilyushin jets operated by Federal Nigeria, dropping their bombs on civilian centres throughout Biafra...At Onitsha, the 300 strong congregation of the Apostolic Church decided to stay on while others fled and to pray for deliverance. Col. [Murtala] Mohammed's* Second Division found them in the church, dragged them out, tied their hands behind their backs and executed them."

(Sunday Times, London, 26 April, 1968, p. 12)

*Col. Mohammed took power in 1975; was assassinated in a military coup in 1976. He never paid for his crimes in this life. Nor did any of his accomplices. 

Amal Kenawy (1974-2012): RIP

The Egyptian artist, Amal Kenawy, died last Sunday of leukemia. She was 38.

One of the continent's really compelling contemporary artists, and a leading voice in the thriving Cairo art scene, her work captured the simmering individual and collective anxieties in Egypt and anticipated the 2011 revolt at Tahrir Square. 

A most wonderful human being, Amal was diagnosed last year and few months ago was informed that her cancer was too advanced for any treatment. Her untimely transition is one good reason the Igbo say that death is stupid!

*  *  *  * 

For Amal

It does not matter
If the Nile weeps blood
Or the Aswan disgorges
Broken limbs of pharaohs
And Egypt drowns in flood

But there is calm
In the precincts of Tahrir
And the howls of Spring
And the din of cavalry
Tug our memory's wing

It does not matter now
That a crowd of elders
Hulls our child into the abyss
At the rite of renewal
At the rite of coming
.................and going 

© Chika Okeke-Agulu

Yale Fellowship in Sacred Music

Yale ISM Fellows in Sacred Music, Worship and the Arts

The Yale Institute of Sacred Music is accepting applications for the 2013-­-2014 ISM Fellows in Sacred Music, Worship and the Arts. Scholars and practitioners whose work is in sacred music, liturgical/ritual studies or religion and the arts are invited to apply. This residential fellowship carries a stipend of up to $52,000 and housing is provided. Other benefits include travel and research funds, and offers the opportunity to teach. The ISM is particularly interested in considering applications from scholars and practitioners whose work lies outside of Western Christianity. 

For full details on the program, please visit http://www.yale.edu/ism/fellows/ 
or contact the ISM Fellows Coordinator at glen.segger@yale.edu. 
The deadline for applications is October 15, 2012. 

Goethe-Institut Fellowship at Haus der Kunst (Info)

Haus der Kunst is pleased to announce a new post-doctoral fellowship program the "Goethe-Institut Fellowship at Haus der Kunst." The program will award each fellowship for one academic year (September to July) beginning in fall 2012.
Supported by the Goethe-Institut, the "Goethe-Institut Fellowship at Haus der Kunst" is designed for international emerging scholars focusing on global perspectives of modern and contemporary art, especially on the postwar, postcolonial, and post-communist periods. According to Haus der Kunst director Okwui Enwezor, "the aim of the fellowship is to establish research as a new cornerstone of the museum's vision and develop a reflexive context that allows for the interplay of art, culture, politics, and society in the way modern and contemporary art are understood on a global level." The "Goethe-Institut Fellowship" is an important building block towards this aim.
The Goethe-Institut and Haus der Kunst, will jointly select the fellows and make an effort to consider scholars from underrepresented parts of the world in identifying appropriate candidates. Haus der Kunst will provide the infrastructure for the "Goethe-Institut Fellowship at Haus der Kunst" and will integrate the fellow in the curatorial team. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to gain practical experience in a public museum dedicated to contemporary art, enrich their experience on a curatorial level, and to broaden their understanding of the operations at a site of contemporary cultural production. In the process, the fellow will become involved in the key features of Haus der Kunst's work as a non-collecting public museum whose central mission is based on the development of high level research and scholarship transmitted to the public through exhibitions, research, and educational programs.
Conversely, the "Goethe-Institut Fellowship at Haus der Kunst" program aims to incorporate the fellows' knowledge in developing the institutions research and public programs and to promote a common global outreach and cultural exchange based on long-term relationships. The end result of a fellowship could be, for example, a symposium/colloquium featuring well-known scholars, a series of academic/public programs, or an exhibition accompanied by a publication.
According to Johannes Ebert, general secretary of the Goethe-Institut "the concept of the collaboration expresses the interest of the Goethe-Institut in supporting Haus der Kunst as a junction of activities that will bring together fellows, visiting artists, curators, and scholars in mutual exchange."
The Goethe-Institut will fund the program for an initial period of five years. It is in the explicit interest of both parties to nurture the partnership beyond that into the future.
For further information on the fellowship please contact Mrs. Isabella Kredler (kredler@hausderkunst.de) at the curatorial office at Haus der Kunst.
For images please visit our download area www.hausderkunst.de/presse/info.htm.
Kind regards,
Elena Heitsch and Jacqueline Falk


Haus der Kunst
Prinzregentenstraße 1
80538 München
+49 89 211 27-115
+49 89 211 27-157 Fax
presse@hausderkunst.de
www.hausderkunst.de

Handelsregister München
HRB 100018
USt-IdNr. DE 811612530

Royal Benin Art in Exile: Nigerian Official's response

It has been reported that the Director-General of the Nigerian Commission for Museums and Monument, Mallam Yusuf Abdallah Usman has challenged  the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's claim that the Royal Benin art objects it has just received passed all legal requirements, or that no claims had been made on the objects. Now, Mallam Usman has said that he is publicly demanding the return of all Benin objects that came from the well documented looting of the Palace of the Oba of Benin in 1897. Sounds great.

But as I have suggested before,  the Nigerian authorities need to work with--by which I mean provide political, financial and legal resources to--the Oba's Court, so that the case for the return of the exiled works is spearheaded by the Oba of Benin whose great-grand father owned the objects (or held them in trust for the Kingdom, if you will). If the Nigerian authorities are willing and ready, the first thing to do is take legal action against that Galway family for keeping objects stolen by their ancestor in the family's collection. I would think that that case should set the ground for any future Benin art-related (legal) actions. In the meantime, the Nigerian government (on behalf of the Oba of Benin) can bring tremendous pressure on public institutions holding the 1897 Benin objects, to compel them to seriously consider other mutually beneficial ways of resolving the fate of the objects. Otherwise, the Director-General's reported response will be seen as nothing but mere grandstanding.

The Robert Lehman Gift to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston: Matters Arising (HuffPost)

Commemorative head of a defeated neighboring leader, Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria, late 15th-early 16th century, *Robert Owen Lehman Collection, *Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) has just become a major player among collections of the famed Royal Benin brass and ivory sculptures, thanks to the gift of 34 objects by Robert Owen Lehman. And the MFA and its publics are justifiably thrilled because until this gift the museum had only one Benin object in its 20-year-old African collection. Plans are on to build a dedicated permanent gallery for the Lehman Collection. 

As a student of Benin art, this is great news, and I cannot wait to see this collection when it opens to the public in late 2013. It is unquestionably to the benefit of Benin art scholarship and enthusiasts that the Lehman Collection, which has more or less been off the radar, will now be accessible to students and scholars -- excluding of course(!) those from Africa who would never get travel visas to visit the MFA, or any other American museum for that matter. And who knows what new scholarship the collection might inspire? 

Commemorative head of an Oba (King), Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria, late 16th century, *Robert Owen Lehman Collection, *Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Still, each time I read news about Benin works that were originally looted in 1897 from the Palace of Oba Ovonramwen, the great-grandfather of the present Oba Erediauwa of the Benin Kingdom, it is impossible forget that the fate of these artworks remains unresolved. Of course, western institutions and governments have carefully managed the laws governing cultural heritage, and imposed arbitrary dates that give legal cover to museums holding works such as those from the Benin Court. But there are ethical imperatives that cannot be glossed over by stupid legal regimes. 

One thing is certain: Calls for the resolution of the problem caused by British looters of Benin royal art collection will not go away -- especially now that Nigerian/world-citizen voices have learned to harness the popular power of the internet to demand action, with occasional victories. 

Pectoral showing two officials, Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria, 16th-17th century, *Robert Owen Lehman Collection, *Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Take for instance what happened in late 2010 when the heirs of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Galway, one of the leaders of the so-called Benin Punitive Expedition, quietly consigned several objects, including an extremely rare ivory pendant "Queen Idia" mask, taken from the Benin Court by their ancestor, to the Sotheby's London for sale. When bloggers, journalists and cultural critics petitioned the Sotheby's to reconsider its participation in the Galway transaction, we were told that the auction would go on. But when the clamor heated up fueled by an international signature campaign, Sotheby's cancelled the sale -- or rather, the Galway heirs withdrew the consignment. 

This time around, some commentators have tried to equate the Galway-Sotheby's saga with the Lehman-MFA gift. But I think these are not quite the same, given that, according to the MFA press announcement, Mr. Lehman bought all the works in his Benin collection from the art market between the 1950s and 1970s. Where the Galway family simply wanted to make lots of money from their looted inheritance (and given the controversy surrounding the auction, I could not imagine any self-respecting public institution touching them with a long pole, which means they most likely would have disappeared into private collections, not to be seen again for a long time), Mr. Lehman moved his collection to a public museum, where the works will be available to anyone interested in them. 

Relief plaque showing a battle scene, Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria, 1550-1650, *Robert Owen Lehman Collection, *Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

So, under the circumstances, it will be good to see these 34 works -- which include some first-rate examples of Benin Court art -- at the MFA when the dedicated gallery opens in 2013. The thing though is that, by acquiring this important collection, the MFA joins other top-tier western museums (the Met, Art Institute of Chicago, British Museum, the Berlin, and Vienna Ethnological Museums, etc.) that must bear the burden of resolving the ethical quagmire that is Benin Royal Art, no matter how passionately James Cuno and others like him want to claim expropriated art by colonial powers for the so-called global (read Euro-American) encyclopedic museums.

There are small, significant steps that can be taken in the meantime, and there is some indication that the MFA may be willing to begin. According to Christraud Geary, the respected Teel Senior Curator of African and Oceanic Art, the Lehman Collection installation will fully explore the circumstances under which the objects were taken from Benin City. That is to say, the MFA will not ignore (or relegate to a footnote as some other collections have) the problematic history of the Benin objects in their collection; and the Court and Benin communities will be consulted in the process. I would hope that the museum will find the courage to go further than this. 

Saltcellar, Sapi peoples, Sierra Leone and Guinea, late 15th-early 16th century, *Robert Owen Lehman Collection, *Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

At the 2007 opening of the groundbreaking, comprehensive Benin: Kings and Ritual exhibition at the Museum of Ethnology, Vienna, Oba Erediauwa stated that while the Benin Court is not necessarily demanding the repatriation all the objects looted by the British, it wishes to enter into workable, mutual understanding with museums holding these objects such that there could be temporary loans to the Court where these objects (actually their replacements produced after the restoration of the kingdom in 1914) remain a vital part of the ritual and social life of the Oba and the Edo Kingdom. But will museums holding Benin Court's works of art explore this commonsense, ethical route?

Huffington Post tribute to Segun Olusola

Here's my tribute to Segun Olusola, published in Huffington Post:

Chika Okeke-Agulu: Segun Olusola: In Memoriam