Becker\u2019s vision for the collection would be centered in the present, not the past. Living artists working across the African diaspora would share space with historic makers from the continent\u2013some centuries old.<\/p>\n
She stands as a prominent example of how museums across the United States are reconsidering the presentation of their African material.<\/p>\n
Like the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh which completed a total renovation of its permanent collection galleries this past October, reconnecting Egypt with Africa. Despite its location on the African continent, museums, like this one, have commonly separated their Egyptian objects from other African holdings, a subtle, yet profoundly successful effort made towards distancing the magnificence of Pharaonic Egypt from Africa.<\/p>\n
Culture on the African continent and the intellect and innovation of African people proves more difficult to dismiss when remembering it birthed ancient Egypt and the pharaohs and hieroglyphs and Pyramids. The racially motivated colonial telling of world history flows better with Egypt more European and less African.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy looking at Egypt separately from the rest of Africa, you lose the fact that Egypt is an African nation,\u201d North Carolina Museum of Art Director Valerie Hillings told Forbes.com, stating the obvious while reinforcing the impact of this historic curatorial choice on generations of visitors and their perceptions of Africa. \u201cFurthermore, by excising Pharaonic Egypt from the continent and setting it up on its own pedestal, you lose the connection to the other great ancient civilization on the Nile, the Kingdom of Kush (present day Sudan), and its own connection to the Axumite Kingdom (present day Ethiopia), both of which are now mostly forgotten. Without Egypt, one\u2019s understanding of the complex and fascinating history of Africa is not complete.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Western institutions operating from a colonial framework, maybe that was the goal all along.<\/p>\n
Africa as \u201ccomplex\u201d and \u201cfascinating\u201d doesn\u2019t fit the narrative. \u201cPrimitive\u201d works much better. The \u201cDark Continent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Treating Africa more as a single country as opposed to a massive and diverse continent, 5,000 miles from top to bottom, 54 countries today, 1.4 billion people, thousands of distinct historic and living cultures and dialects\u2013with Egypt removed\u2013makes for a tidier, if utterly inaccurate, story. Accuracy, however, has never been the primary consideration when shaping history through the colonial perspective.<\/p>\n
For its updated presentation, the North Carolina Museum of Art brings forward this unsettling question of why Egypt was excised from the African continent.<\/p>\n
The Africa We Ought to Know<\/p>\n
NCMA now boldly calls attention to these manipulations, titling its new African gallery, with Egypt included, \u201cThe Africa We Ought to Know.\u201d Implicit in the moniker, more than 100 years of racially motivated misinformation fed Americans, Europeans\u2013the world\u2013about Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn general, Westerners know very little about Africa and still today our knowledge is tainted by colonialism and stereotypes,\u201d Hillings said. \u201cThere is so much more to this continent that we all ought to know about: the powerful and influential kingdoms that flourish(ed) in Africa, their connectedness to the rest of the world and their participation and contribution to global histories, whether in antiquity or more recent times or today. That is what we present in, \u2018The Africa We Ought to Know.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Wall text inside the gallery states: \u201cWithin museum and academic circles, Egypt has long been positioned culturally with the Near East or the more \u2018civilized\u2019 arts of the Greco-Roman world. While this placement isn\u2019t totally incorrect, this bias has caused Egypt\u2019s dense layers to be overlooked at best and intentionally omitted at worst. However, a strong movement throughout the museum world has reintroduced it into African galleries, recognizing that cultural boundaries and influences are mobile and permeable and that Egypt is indeed on\u2014and very much a part of\u2014the continent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Africa, with Egypt included, celebrated as a continent where empires have flourished over millennia, each contributing to a fascinating antiquity and a vigorous history extending to a dynamic and creative present.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what most inspires Becker, Africa\u2019s creative present.<\/p>\n
\u201cHistorical collections are often separated from contemporary collections and there are contemporary artists who are very much mining the past, their own cultural past and legacies,\u201d she told Forbes.com. \u201cThose are the artists I\u2019ve become very interested in working with and showing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Artists like Lhola Amira (b. 1984; Gugulethu, South Africa).<\/p>\n
Facing the Future<\/p>\n
Opening December 17, 2022, \u201cLhola Amira: Facing the Future\u201d launches the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco\u2019s new African art program at the de Young museum, foregrounding the permanent collection as a site of exploration for the evolving nature of African arts and their meanings today. Becker\u2019s programming features contemporary artists whose work draws on and engages the artistic and cultural traditions of Africa.<\/p>\n
First up, Amira (pronouns THEY\/THEM\/THEIRS), who embodies South African Nguni spiritual practices in THEIR life and work, emphasizing the power of remembering ancestors.<\/p>\n
\u201cTHEIR practice is very much about asking critical questions around what are the wounds that people, places, objects carry and little practices of care and healing that can move us forward in terms of cultural healing,\u201d Becker explained. \u201cA m\u00e9lange of indigenous spirituality, Nguni specifically, and Christianity, but also aesthetics and critical, decolonial ways of thinking and bringing all of that together to address spaces and issues that are still with us\u2013a contemporary response.\u201d<\/p>\n
Undeniably African. Undeniably contemporary. Undeniably rooted on the continent.<\/p>\n
Like the work of British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare (b. 1962), the first artist Becker added to the collection upon being hired. Shonibare is an international sensation with artworks and exhibitions at the most prestigious museums around the world. Still, he, and other African artists who\u2019ve broken through in the \u201cmainstream\u201d Western art world, find their connections to the continent marginalized.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfrican artists who become very well known internationally are often incorporated into an international perspective on their work or a more global art historical approach and often the African side of that is left out,\u201d Becker explains.<\/p>\n
By working with contemporary artists who are deeply interested in historical African art, like Shonibare and Amira, Becker hopes to demonstrate how the museum\u2019s collection remains relevant today, how all African art belongs on an ever evolving continuum.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe changes over time, that is what we lose in these big permanent collections, this nuanced change over time,\u201d Becker said. \u201cThere are some art practices\u2013like masquerade\u2013some kinds of masquerade continue, but there are other art practices that died out because of Christianity, art practices that were especially rooted in religious practice had to adapt or die out. These nuances around change over time visitors don\u2019t get a sense of, as a result, the collections and this idea of African art is fossilized in people\u2019s minds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLook No Further\u201d<\/p>\n
As the museum sector continues engaging in extreme hand-wringing over how it can become more welcoming, more diverse in its audiences and programming, the answer, often times, can be found right under their noses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest potential for museums in the United States and the biggest possibility and the biggest area of growth lies in these collections. It lies in the African collection,\u201d Becker said. \u201cThe biggest potential to move forward as a society and as a culture in the U.S. lies in these collections because the African art collections connect Africans in the diaspora as well as Africa. We forget that African Americans in the United States and immigrants from Africa in the United States have a right to be connected to and close to their objects.\u201d<\/p>\n
Museums wondering how to be more diverse with a centimeter of dust on every item sitting in its African collection which hasn\u2019t been reinstalled, refreshed or reconsidered in any way in 70 years simply aren\u2019t committed to improving.<\/p>\n
Becker thinks about Oakland\u2019s large Ethiopian population when imagining how museum collections of African art can be utilized to reach new audiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we want to engage these communities, be these diverse institutions and anti-racist institutions, then look no further,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco hired Natasha Becker in late 2020 to become the institutions\u2019 inaugural curator of African art, her addition was not only historic for the museums, it proved groundbreaking for the entire field. While Becker, a South African, was steeped in African history and historic African artforms and culture, her specialty was contemporary African art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":23290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2,31],"tags":[7,30,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-23293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"category-featured","9":"category-music","10":"tag-apie-project","11":"tag-culture","12":"tag-music"},"yoast_head":"\n