| Contemporary African art is cosmopolitan and in vogue
Contemporary African art has become a force in the international art world, appearing in galleries, museums and prestigious global surveys. This past summer, for the first time in its 112-year history, the Venice Biennale included an entire pavilion devoted to African art. And so the timing of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art�s new "Tapping Currents" exhibit of top African talent, six of whom showed in Venice, is spot on. Organized by Leesa Fanning, the museum�s associate curator of modern and contemporary art, the exhibit features seven pieces by seven artists in the Bloch Building�s Project Space and two weekends of new media screenings. The show offers an illuminating introduction to African art today. Fanning�s selections steer clear of suffering AIDS patients, starving children, exotic animals and other longstanding clich�s that figure in Western perceptions of the continent Instead, these African artists probe the soul of their homeland, illumining its values, traditions, history and the influences that shaped it.
op-ed: Misrepresentation of African Art
The exhibition "Resonance from the Past: African Art from the New Orleans Museum of Art" at the Middlebury Museum of Art set the framework for a course this semester that included students from diverse academic backgrounds ranging from art history to physics. Since the exhibition opened in September, class participants in History of Art and Architecture 228: African Art, Museums and the Politics of Representation have been introduced to African art and had the opportunity to engage in a critical examination of traditional approaches to the study of non-western art. A review of the exhibition in The Middlebury Campus ("Tribal sculpture show shifts African bias," Sept. 19) provoked a stimulating discussion session for the class, which inspired students to contribute this commentary to the newspaper.
Press cool on EU-Africa progress
Already with regard to the Gordon Brown-Robert Mugabe standoff, many European countries made the right choice. This is a positive attitude. For their part, the Africans showed proof of solidarity and resisted the temptation to try to outshine one another... Of course the question was one of how to turn a new page while paternalistic and "neo-colonial" attitudes still abound under the cover of human rights concerns. Is Mugabe a dictator? That is quite possible. But is he any more of a dictator than some of the other heads of state who travelled to Lisbon? .
Boks to cause a stir with silence of the lambs
WRU spin doctors made great play of the fact that Springbok stir-fry was on the menu at the Wales team's hotel in Saundersfoot this week. Well, I'm told Cardiff's Hilton Hotel – the South African base for this week – do a lovely bit of Welsh lamb. Just who will be munching on what come tomorrow afternoon will soon become clear. But with the world champions in town intent on giving coach Jake White a victorious send-off, the time for jokey gimmicks will be over soon enough. As well as the stir-fry (chortle, chortle), there were a few other little snippets of mirth at the new Welsh headquarters down West this week. For instance, when rookie Morgan Stoddart was told tongue-in-cheek by one interviewer that star Bok wing Bryan Habana likes to race a cheetah in his spare time, the Scarlet full-back replied: "I've heard the cheetah's only got three legs!" Suffice to say it was not borrowed from the Peter Kay manual, and there was something of a stunned silence immediately after he said it.
Artists of the Black Community exhibit in Surprise
An exhibit showcasing the diverse work of local African-American artists is entering its last week at the West Valley Art Museum. The annual show, "ABC: Artists of the Black Community," runs through Dec. 16. The works come from members of ABC/AZ, Artists of the Black Community Arizona, an organization founded in 1980 by acclaimed artist Eugene Grigsby to mentor and promote local African-American artists. "It is an incredibly fluid, dynamic group of artists, constantly changing from year to year," says curator George Palovich of the West Valley Art Museum. "There is a variety of approaches, but they all bolster each other." .
Taking Back ‘My Hump’
While the Black Eyed Peas' answer to those questions involves getting “love drunk off my hump," some professors at the Berklee College of Music, in Boston, offer up an entirely different response to the lyrics — one aimed at helping their students understand the “commercialization of hip-hop" and the role students have in evolving the genre. “The position of our college is not to put a damper on popular culture," said Bill Banfield, a professor of Africana studies, music and society at the college. “We want to teach about what ‘hip-hop' really means, both historically and today." This year, the college is holding a “Hip-Hop Empowerment Summit: Making Your Music Heard" on Saturday, which will feature high school and college-aged hip-hop artists and a panel discussion led by Banfield and local hip-hop artists.
Ex-mayor Gantt to be honored
Leaders of the Afro-American Cultural Center have unveiled the formal name of its new facility currently under construction uptown. The Harvey B. Gantt African-American Art and Cultural Center is set to open in 2009 as part of the Wachovia cultural complex on South Tryon Street. The 44,000-square-foot facility will replace the center's current building on North Myers Street in uptown's First Ward. AACC officials announced earlier this year that the center would be named in honor of Gantt, an architect who in 1983 became Charlotte's first black mayor. But the official title wasn't revealed until the center's annual Jazzy Holiday luncheon on Friday. Gantt, who initially was reluctant to the idea, said Sunday he is "absolutely honored, humbled" by the idea.
The post-boomer candidate
Barack Obama is an appealing icon of change. In reading Dreams From My Father, I was engaged by a description of his half-sister's dilemma -- torn between the Western values of individual success and the African values of community. He has the capacity to turn a problem around, roaming across its many surfaces. He gets it. His philosophical frame of mind appeals to the educated elite of the Democratic Party. His largest group of supporters are college-educated. But I am forced to ask, against my own grain, whether Democrats need a philosopher or a combatant. In his stump speech, Obama says, ''I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights. . . . I don't want to pit red America against blue America.'' Neither do I. Sometimes, I approach politics like a parent watching her children: ''I don't care who's right and who's wrong; just stop fighting.'' But of course I do care who's right, who's wrong, who'll win.
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