AACHRONYM

Critical Interventions signs with Routledge

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:28:00 +0000

Critical Interventions is pleased to announce a new collaboration between the journal and Routledge, acclaimed publisher of learned and professional journals in printed form and other media. Under a new licensing agreement reached this February, Routledge (a subsidiary of Taylor & Francis Group) will take over the publishing and global distribution of Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture in print and digital formats. I wish to thank the CI Board of Directors and everyone who has contributed to the realization of Critical Interventions since its inception. We remain committed to its focus as a forum for important scholarly discourse on African art history and look forward to a fruitful collaboration with Routledge.

Shown above: Cover of Critical Interventions Numbers 9/10.

CFP: The Journal of Art Historiography Special Issue on African Art

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:36:00 +0000

The Journal of Art Historiography, a peer reviewed journal (http://arthistoriography.wordpress.com), is interested in producing a special issue on African art. The discursive practice of African art history is at a crucial juncture, in which rising interest in African art from a global perspective intersects with a possible fragmentation of the field into divergent disciplines each with its own focus. The historiography of African visual arts itself confronts an cross-disciplinary problem identified by Journal of Art Historiography as a concern that “contemporary scholarship will forget its earlier legacy and neglect the urgency and rigour with which those early debate were conducted. The journal is therefore committed to studying art historical scholarship, in its institutional and conceptual foundations, from the past to the present in all areas and all periods”.

African art history is particularly in need of historiographical examination, given the increasing distance between early scholarship and contemporary discourses. The last significant historiography of the field was carried out by the venerable Monni Adams in a classical essay titled “African Visual Arts from an Art Historical Perspective” (African Studies Review, 32/2, 1989: 55-103), which formed a two part overview of African Studies published in the journal, the other written by Paula Ben Amos. Although the journal African Arts has engaged the issue of African art’s discourse in various presentations in the journal to date, the kind of comprehensive analysis carried out by Monni Adams has largely been absent and is in dire need of being updated, given how much has happened in the field in the two and half decades since the article was published.

The Journal of Historiography’s special issue on African arts therefore provides a unique opportunity to revisit the history of art writing on the subject of African visual culture and create a critical dialogue between various generations of African art historians, which will ideally allow foundational research and writing to be subjected to contemporary knowledge practices. It also provides opportunity to theorize the relationships between Africa and its Diasporas, which serves to locate African art within global discourses in all contexts of its practice.

I am serving as guest editor this proposed issue and I will like to invite proposals for articles on the subject and suggestions for important texts and documents that might be included. Previous editions of the journal can be viewed on its website (http://arthistoriography.wordpress.com) for guidance on the Journal of Art Historiography’s focus and submission guidelines.

Proposals should be no more than 400 words long and are due July 15, 2012. Completed articles (4000-12,000 words inclusive of notes) are due October 30, 2012. Previously published and articles that engage the historiography of African art in discursive contexts outside the Anglophone world are welcome and relevant articles will be translated.

Please send proposals and suggestions to:

Prof. Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie

ogbechie@gmail.com

Guest Editor, Journal of Art Historiography Special Issue on African art

"MAKING HISTORY" Featured on ArtDaily.org

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:54:00 +0000

The landmark Internet website ArtDaily has published a review of Making History. A screenshot of the page is provided (copyright ArtDaily.org). Links to other important reviews of the book and the formal launching of the book that took place three weeks ago are listed below:

Public Lecture, Minneapolis Institute of Art, January 12, 2012.
Santa Barbara Independent, February 11, 2012.
Making History Opens a New Vista in African Art Collections, Sunday Trust, January 29, 2012.
Why Illicit Trade in African Art Thrives, The Nation, February 1, 2012.
Documented Legacies, This Day, February 7, 2012.

"Making History" Book Launch in Lagos

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:09:00 +0000


HRH Obi Achebe of Onicha formally presenting Making History. Flanking the King, Mr. Akinsanya

It's been a week since the formal presentation of my new book, Making History: African Collectors and the Canon of African Art, was launched in Lagos Nigeria. The formal presentation of the book turned out well and I was honored with a large turnout of the cultural elite of Lagos all of who praised the book highly. The event was chaired by His Royal Highness, Obi Achebe of Onicha who was accompanied by two of his chiefs. In respect to the king, who is my kinsman and a leader of the Ezechime Clan, I attended the book launching wearing the traditional regalia of red-cap chiefs. Posted here, some pictures from the event.

Obi Achebe's arrival at the book launching

L-R: Femi Akinsanya, Obi Achebe, the author, and Mayo Adediran, who reviewed the book at the launching

Receiving the King's Entourage

Cross section of the audience

My good friend and mentor, Afolabi Kofo Abayomi (and wife), who played a great role in encouraging art collectors in Lagos

With Ndidi Dike (to my immediate right) and other members of my family

Giving the King a tour of the exhibition

Mrs. Veronica Ogbechie (my mother, center) with Obi Achebe and my sisters Florence (right) and Nwaka (Left)

Symposium on African Cultural Patrimony at Stanford University

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:07:00 +0000

The issue of Africa's claim to its plundered cultural patrimony is becoming mainstreamed through several conferences and emergent publications. Stanford University's Ruth K. Franklin Symposium on the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas was this year devoted to the subject. The symposium featured presentations from renowned experts on cultural patrimony law such as KateFitz Gibbon and Emeritus Professor John Merryman (who literally wrote the book on this subject), and from scholars and museum personnel. I presented a paper (Who Owns Africa’s Cultural Heritage? Museums, African Cultural Patrimony and the Issue of Restitution) that made a case for the Edo Kingdom of Benin's claim over its looted cultural patrimony currently located in museums and private collections all over the world.

Picture: Visitors to the British Museums viewing examples of Benin bronze plaques.
Picture credit: The Guardian newspapers, UK.

"Making History": Lecture and Book Signing at MIA

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:52:00 +0000

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts invited a presentation lecture and book signing on Making History: African Collectors and the Canon of African Art. The event marked the first public presentation of my new book in the USA. I also reviewed some African artworks in the museum holdings, with particular focus on the MIA's collection of Benin artworks, which are in the process of being reinstalled.

Critical Interventions Number 8 is Published

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:56:00 +0000

Announcing the publication of

Critical Interventions Number 8: Special Issue on African Cinemas

Guest edited by Victoria Pasley, CI#8 focuses on African Cinemas through analysis of different contexts of film practices in Africa. The cinematic arts can be defined as the apex of a culture of visuality and it is not by chance that the moving image has become a key technology of narrative in the era of globalization. In this regard, African cinemas of different historical origins, discursive focus and aesthetic orientation are increasingly notable as key aspects of African visual and cultural experiences. The debate over what constitutes African cinemas occupies an important place in these developments, especially in light of the divide between auteur and populist traditions of African filmmaking that seem to divide neatly along colonial lines into Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone cultures of African cinema. However, these categories do not adequately describe the divergent modes of practice evident in how such cinemas are located in the global economy, where transnational engagements defeat the essentialist idea of a homogenous “Africa”. In this context, the classical definition of African cinema as a mode of practice that adheres to the auteur tradition of French filmmaking confronts the emergent example of Nollywood and related modes of film production that hew to Hollywood’s powerful business-oriented model with its global preeminence. These two contexts present two visions of African cinema that can sometimes seem totally divergent. However, as Kenneth Harrow concludes in his essay in this volume, the lines between the two modes of African cinema are collapsing.

This issue of Critical Interventions therefore investigates the history and disparate locales of African Cinemas through significant articles that take its transnational origins into consideration and also track changing definitions of African praxis within the global discourse of cinema. This jumbo edition of the journal features articles by Alexie Tcheuyap, Sheila Petty, Etienne-Marie Lassi, Kenneth Harrow, Amadou Fofana, Cara Duncan-Moyer, Alioune Sow, Scott M. Edmonson, Jonathan Shaw, Stefanie Van der Peer, Toni Pressley-Sanon, Mariam Konate Deme and Dramane Deme. It also features a republication of Teshome Gabriel’s seminal article— “Towards a Critical Theory of Third World Cinema”.

CI#8 Table of Contents

Editors’ Desk

Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie—Mediating Visions

Victoria Pasley—African Cinema

Interventions

Alexie Tcheuyap—African Cinema(s): Definitions, Identity and Theoretical

Considerations

Sheila Petty—Self-Styling Identities in Recent African Screen Media

Research

Etienne-Marie Lassi—Worlds behind the World: Filming the Invisible in Francophone

Africa

Amadou Fofana—“Cinefication” in West Africa

Cara Moyer-Duncan—New Directions, No Audiences: Independent Black Filmmaking in

Post-Apartheid South Africa

Alioune Sow—Malian Cinema and the Question of Military Power

Scott M. Edmondson—Akan-esque Niches and Riches: The Aesthetics of Power and

Fantastic Pragmatism in Ghanaian Video Films

Jonathan Shaw—Filming Kivu, Speaking Nande: Kabale Syahgiganza and Making

Cinema in a Context of Conflict

Stefanie Van de Peer—The Physicalities of Documentaries by African Women: The

Case of Ateyyat El Abnoudy’s “Permissible Dreams and Responsible Women”

Toni Pressley-Sanon—Raoul Peck’s “The Man by the Shore”, Orality, Film and

Repression

Mariam Konate Deme and Dramane Deme—Aesthetic Imprints of an Epic Memory: A

Pan-African Reading of Three Filmic Tales

Archives

Kenneth W. Harrow—In Remembrance: Teshome Gabriel

Teshome Gabriel—Towards a Critical Theory of Third World Cinema

Jonathan Haynes—Nnebue: the Anatomy of Power

Recollections

Kenneth W. Harrow—Toward a New Paradigm of African Cinema

In Memoriam: C. Odumegwu Ojukwu 1933-2011

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:11:00 +0000

Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, General of the Armed Forces of Biafra (1967-1970), Ikemba of Nnewi, and Dikedioramma Ndigbo passed away in London yesterday night. Ojukwu led the republic of Biafra in its failed secession against the Federal Government of Nigeria in a conflict that left more than one million Igbo civilians dead and pioneered images of starving African children in Western media. The pros and cons of the secession effort are still being debated but it is undeniable that the near-disintegration of the Nigerian union sparked several important changes of direction for the country. The Igbo peoples that emerged from the civil war faced great privation (I know; I was one of the Igbo children who survived the war). They lost everything in the war and had their properties in other parts of Nigeria confiscated but nevertheless went on to rebuild their lives at a very rapid pace afterwards. The seed of disunity that the war sowed in Nigeria has not healed even today. Thus although Igbo peoples are great overachievers and many attain great heights in their personal endeavors wherever in the world they are located, it is also true that their drive for personal achievement and overall ambition has undermined Igbo unity in the fractious politics of modern Nigeria. Dim Ojukwu was a uniting figure for Igbo peoples, a standard bearer for a lost glory and constant reminder to Igbo peoples at home and abroad of what might have been and of the sacrifice of those who died defending their right to simple human dignity. His passing leaves the entire Igbo nation greatly diminished.

Photograph of Ojukwu culled from Guardian Newspapers Nigeria.
Below: Flag of the Republic of Biafra

MAKING HISTORY: AFRICAN COLLECTORS AND THE CANON OF AFRICAN ART

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 17:12:00 +0000

My new book arrives in bookstores later this November in English and French editions. I post here the cover pages for both versions. A culmination of three years of research and writing, the book investigates the curious fact that African art history largely disregards African art collections owned by Africans or held in Africa. The goal of the book is to review the reasons for this marginalization and use a notable African art collection, the Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection, based in Lagos, Nigeria to examine how such collections might be recovered for art history. A website for the art collection goes live next week in anticipation of the book's publication.

Invisible Borders: The Trans-Africa Photography Project

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:55:00 +0000

From ART AGENDA:

Invisible Borders: Trans-African Photography Initiative

www.invisible-borders.com
Sharefb.giftw.gif

Invisible Borders takes off on November 2nd, 2011 for their Third Photography Road Trip

Invisible Borders Trans-African Photography Initiative is proud to announce the third edition of their annual road trip project, taking place from November 2 to December 16, 2011.

The official kick-off for this year's event will commence in Lagos, with twelve African artists, travelling about 12 000 km, all the way up to Addis Ababa, visiting on their way, the capitals and major cities of Nigeria, Tchad, Sudan, and Ethiopia. Once again, the approach will be a focus on revealing, through the art of photography, images of African life and people that usually go unnoticed in the media, all the while exploring themes centred on socio-political discourses prevalent on the continent.

With a group of ten photographers and two writers, who will capture the essence of the road trip in words, the 2011 Invisible Borders team will focus their mission on the creation of artistic works in collaboration with indigenous artists in the cities visited. The question of identity as it translates into style and modes of dressing, as well as issues such as Women's Rights, the role of economic world powers in the shaping of the African economy, nature and wildlife preservation/sustainability, as well as conflicts in the African soil will be considered as topics to be explored.

On the final leg of this year's adventure, upon arrival in Addis Ababa at the end of November, a workshop involving local photographers, along with an exhibition featuring a selection of works produced during the road trip, will take place at the Museum of Modern Art of Addis Ababa, in collaboration with its director, Aida Muluneh.

Following the success of the previous road trips, this year's edition will also be made into a documentary film and book. Additionally, activities of the journey will be the case for exclusive online posts from the writers, photographers, video logs from the film crew, and real-time testimonies from participants as the journey unfolds. This can be accessed via Invisible Borders' blog (www.invisible-borders.blogspot.com) and social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Creative Africa Network).

This year's participants are as follows: Amaize Ojeikere, Ray Daniels Okeugo, Chidinma Nnorom, Nana Oforiatta-Ayim, Emmanuel Iduma, Ala Khier, Unoma Giese, Kemi Akin-Nibosun,Tom Saater, Uche Okpa-Iroha, Jumoke Sanwo, Emeka Okereke.

For press inquiries, please contact Anna Djigo at public.relations@invisible-borders.com.

About Invisible Borders

Invisible Borders Trans-African Photography Initiative is an art-led initiative, founded in Nigeria in 2009 by passionate Nigerian artists—mostly photographers—with a drive and urge to effect change. The vision of the initiative is to become a symbol of networking and trans-border associations within the arts and photography in Africa, but also to become a platform for young emerging talents in the continent, encouraging them to think beyond borders at the beginning of their creative quest.

The mission of the Initiative is to tell Africa's stories, by Africans, through photography and inspiring artistic interventions; to encourage exposure of upcoming African photographers towards art and photography as practiced in other parts of the continent; to establish a platform that encourages and embraces trans-African artistic relationships, and to contribute towards the socio-political discourse shaping Africa of the 21st Century.Their activities aim to cut through the local, national and international, and to create points of interactions between these levels, hence the name "Invisible Borders."

PRESS CONTACT:)
Anna Djigo (public.relations@invisible-borders.com

Follow Invisible Borders online:
Website: http://invisible-borders.com
Facebook: Invisible Borders
Twitter: InvsbleBorders

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:54:00 +0000

Image credit

Critical Interventions Number 7 is Published

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 20:12:00 +0000

Announcing the publication of

Critical Interventions Number 7: Special Issue on African Cultural Patrimony.

CI# 7 investigates the production of value for African art by examining the global perception of African cultural patrimony in discourse as well as efforts by African museums to manage and preserve indigenous cultural heritage within the context of modern nation states. It features articles by Dunja Hersak, Frances Connelly, Christopher Slogar, Carola Lentz, Peter Probst, Sidney L. Kasfir, Sophie Mew, Okechukwu Nwafor Gemma Rodrigues, Jean Borgatti and Silvia Forni.

The articles in this issue of CI are divided into four parts: The Interventions section features Dunja Hersak who uses the works of Trigo Piula to review how established discourse on African art is often at variance with the lived reality of Africans by showing how contemporary global curators have fashioned and fabricated a vision of Africa based on recycling the same two paintings from the artist and completely disregarding the variety evident in his other works. Frances Connelly discusses the contradictions inherent in the idea of primitivism and how this shapes the discourse of authenticity in African art

In the Research section, Christopher Slogar reviews the ongoing plundering of archeological sites in Africa and how plundered ceramics objects are validated through museum exhibition and display. He cites some recent exhibitions in which the practice of collecting African ceramics becomes increasingly conflated with the acquisition of looted antiquities and suggests that scholars of African art should be more concerned about the implications of this conflation for research on the subject. Carola Lentz explores aesthetic and historical genealogy of the Ghanaian seat of state and its implications for a new interpretation of visual politics in modern Ghana. Peter Probst discusses the role of media and mediation in the designation of Osogbo as a UNESCO cultural heritage site and concludes that Yoruba arts and aesthetics should be understood as a form of vernacular media theory in this context. Sidney Kasfir revisits debates about creativity and migration by reading the works of transnational African contemporary artists in light of classical theories by Nietzsche, Wolfe and Simmel. Sophie Mews looks at important experiment in creating diversified museum collections in Mali and Ghana based on the concept of “encyclopedic museums” –i.e. museums that attempt to represent other cultures to African viewers-- and suggests that such museums may provide for reciprocal representation of world cultures in which Africans are not always seen a subjects. Okechukwu Nwafor analyzes the problematic management of a Nigerian museum and suggests that continued mismanagement of cultural heritage impacts negatively on efforts to repatriate Nigerian cultural objects from Western museums.

The Portfolio section presents important new work by the acclaimed transnational artist Allan deSouza that interrogates how cultural legacies of colonization and the condition of exile impacts his current cycle of creativity. Finally, the Recollections section features two views of the art collection management process: Jean Borgatti discusses how an art collector tried to manipulate scholarship to enhance the value of his African art collection and suggests that this kind of manipulation has important implications for the production of value for African art in general. Silvia Forni discusses how the canon and art market combine to define the value of African art and what she considers the unsuccessful efforts of an African collector to break into this process of valuation.

As an item of interest, the cover page of Critical Interventions Number 7 is illustrated with a Helmet Mask of the Igala peoples of Nigeria, used courtesy of the Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection based in Lagos Nigeria. I have been researching this collection since 2009 and have written a book about it that will be published in Fall 2011 by 5 Continents Editions. The book, Making History uses the Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection to evaluate the material process of formalizing and interpreting an African-owned collection of African art, with the goal of defining how such collections might be incorporated into a context of African art studies in which they are currently invisible.

CI#7 Table of Contents

Editor’s Desk
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie---Who Owns Africa’s Cultural Patrimony?

Interventions
Dunja Hersak—-Virtual, Partial and Fabricated Visions of Africa
Frances S. Connelly—-Authentic Irony: Primitivism and Its Aftermath

Research
Christopher Slogar—-Africa Consumed: Cultural Inertia, Looting and Legitimization in Art History
Carola Lentz—-Travelling Emblems of Power: the Ghanaian ‘Seat of State’
Peter Probst—-Revisiting Osogbo: Images, Media and the Art of Mediation in a Yoruba City
Sidney Kasfir—-Creativity and Migration: Back to Nietzsche, Wolfe and Simmel’s Stranger?
Sophie Mew—-‘Universal Museums’ in West Africa: Considerations over the Diversification of Cultural Heritage Institutions in Mali and Ghana
Okechukwu Nwafor—-Culture, Corruption, Politics: National Museum of Unity Enugu and the Struggle for Survival of Cultural Institutions in Nigeria

Portfolio
Gemma Rodrigues, Steven Nelson and Allen Roberts—-His Master's Tools: Recent Works by Allan deSouza

Recollections
Jean Borgatti—-Art Marketing and the Art Market: A Northern Edo Example
Silvia Forni—-Ambiguous Values and Incommensurable Claims: The Canon, The Market and Entangled Histories of Collections and Exhibits

For more information, visit www.criticalinterventions.com

SWANN GALLERY Auctions: Profiting from Slavery...

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 01:51:00 +0000

A friend brought this impending auction to my notice: SWANN Galleries of New York is inviting auction bids for a Pair of "Middle Passage" Slave Shackles, identified as Lot 4 of Sale 2239 (one of two such items on sale). The lot notice states that it is

A pair of shackles of the sort used during the cruel "Middle Passage" from Africa to the Americas. Images of such shackles appear in numerous early anti-slavery books and tracts. For specific examples, see: "An Abstract of the Evidence," London 1791; Lydia Maria Child's "Appeal in Behalf of that Class of Americans called Africans," Boston, 1833; and Lorenzo Dow, "Slave Ships and Slaving," Massachusetts, 1927.

Personally, I am surprised they are not selling an actual African shackled to the leg irons, which might attest to its authenticity.

I have seen slave shackles in museum exhibitions and always felt that their display is in active denial of their horrendous history. This SWANN auction and its request for bids to this gruesome item goes beyond the pale. But then, general lack of accountability for the enslavement of Africans is at the bottom of the racism and capriciousness of global relations between the West and the Rest of the World that is so evident on the international scene today. If you enslave tens of millions of Africans and kill millions of them in the process and no one holds you accountable, then obviously no one bats an eyelid when you incarcerate millions in for profit prisons or imprison them in inner-city ghettos in which they are condemned to a life of endless want. Against that larger framework of injustice, I suppose SWANN's auctioning of slave shackles might be considered a minor insult to Africans worldwide. They are obviously not concerned about that; they are concerned only with profiting yet again from the history of slavery, which enables a perpetual marketing of its gruesome memory. That they can do this without fear of retribution or censure speaks volumes to the disregard for Africans that persists in international relations.

Safeguarding Egypt's Antiquities During a Period of Political Change

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:02:00 +0000

I have been following the uprising in Egypt since it started with some trepidation worrying that the famous Cairo museum and other Egyptian institutions that hold the country’s antiquities might be looted. That fear came true when I read a statement by Zahi Hawass, newly appointed Egyptian Minister of Antiquities and longtime advocate for returning Egyptian artworks to Egypt, stating that some criminal elements made attempts to steal artworks and jewelry from the museum during the protests of recent days. Here’s how Hawass described his feeling about the situation:

My heart is broken and my blood is boiling. I feel that everything I have done in the last nine years has been destroyed in one day, but all the inspectors, young archaeologists, and administrators, are calling me from sites and museums all over Egypt to tell me that they will give their life to protect our antiquities. Many young Egyptians are in the streets trying to stop the criminals.

The intervention of ordinary Egyptians to protect their cultural heritage from thieves is welcome news in this situation. Hawass also noted that:

Due to the circumstances, this behaviour is not surprising; criminals and people without a conscience will rob their own country. If the lights went off in New York City, or London, even if only for an hour, criminal behavior will occur. I am very proud that Egyptians want to stop these criminals to protect Egypt and its heritage.

Hawass is maintaining a running log on his website to inform the world about the state of the antiquities in Egypt. Yesterday, he updated his original comment on looting by stating that the Egyptian people are now protecting the antiquities and that they are largely safe.

I am sure that Western observers will point to the situation in Cairo as a validation of their argument that African artworks should not be returned to their African countries of origin because descendants of their African producers cannot be trusted to safeguard them (let us forget for now the obvious fact that these works were held and managed by their producers for centuries until European colonization and its attendant violence destroyed African societies and resulted in the original pillaging of its cultural patrimony). While the situation in Egypt is problematic, it is actually shows that ordinary people will rise up to protect their cultural heritage in situations like this, if the need arises. I am watching to see how the situation will play out eventually. My hope is that the artworks remain safe and that Hawass’s immense groundbreaking work to repatriate Egypt’s antiquities will not be destroyed by criminals interested in short-term gain.

That said, I want to lay the blame for the situation in Egypt squarely at President Hosni Mubarak’s feet, and for his continued support by Western governments who argue that chaos will ensure if he leaves. Transitions are chaotic by their very nature, since they inevitably produce power vacuums. There is however credible evidence that the chaos we have seen in Egypt over the past two days was orchestrated by elements of the ruling government of Mubarak in order to strike fear into the hearts of people calling for his exit. Already, you can see the change in tone by Western commentators pushing this idea, in an effort to help the beleaguered dictator hold on to his illegitimate government. This effort will fail. Mubarak had 30 years to manage a transition but did not do so: to insist on staying on now that the people have soundly rejected his rule is nothing but the actions of a coward who hopes to bully the people into rejecting their own demands for greater freedom.

I have lived my entire life dealing with African dictators whose devotion to their ego and gross mismanagement of their country’s resources invariably pauperize even the richest African countries. Nigeria is a case in point, and now Egypt has joined this inglorious group of countries ruled by brigands. I am not essentially opposed to “strong-man” rule because some countries need such a guiding hand early on to establish some kind of order and focus for the future. Kermal Attaturk did it in Turkey and handed over to his successors a strong and increasingly thriving country, one of the only two Islamic majority countries to have a stable democracy. All our African leaders seem to do however is pauperize their countries while stashing away the national wealth in Western institutions. They are aided in this by the same Western countries who give lip service to democracy but promote authoritarianism in the Moslem world and even go so far as to subvert democratic governance in these countries when the results run counter to their expectations.

What I cannot understand about African dictators is why they are not more concerned about their actions? Coming from Nigeria, I understand the impact of corruption on the national psyche: Nigeria is one of the most corrupt countries on earth. However, all countries are corrupt to some extent and the scale of corruption in the USA for instance dwarfs anything you can find in Nigeria (google Bernie Madoff, and the wholesale cooptation of the American electoral system by corporate money to get a sense of what I am talking about here. Corruption thrives on a very simple equation: if the expected punishment for corruption is lighter than the expected gain, then corruption thrives, and vice versa). It is perhaps a contradiction in terms to expect a corrupt leader to be concerned about the welfare of his impoverished people. BUT REALLY!!! WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STEALING ONE BILLION DOLLARS AND ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS (aside from the obvious fact that both destroy a country by starving it of needed resources)? All these dictators do is steal public money without expending any effort to improve public infrastructure. Mubarak has had thirty years to elevate Egypt to a higher status of political and economic existence. He hasn't. If we were today looking at an Egypt that has excellent social and economic infrastructure and good conditions of living, one might be able to make an argument that Mubarak’s exit be delayed to allow a peaceful transition to unfold. His government has underperformed and has been based on running a police state, all in the name of keeping stability. Now that he has his back to the wall, he has sent out his goons to create chaos so that he can hang on to power. I hope he fails in this attempt and that Egypt manages to transition to a new government with minimal disruption.

And I hope Egypt’s antiquities and its museums survive the ongoing transition from Mubarak's misrule intact. They are very important to the struggle for Africa’s cultural patrimony.

Egypt asks Berlin to return Nefertiti bust

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:46:00 +0000

From the Associated Press:

CAIRO – Egypt's top archaeologist has formally requested the return of the 3,300-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti that has been in a Berlin museum for decades, the latest move in his eight-year-old campaign to bring home ancient artifacts spirited out of the country during colonial times. (Read the full story here).

Gigantic Deals

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:47:00 +0000

A unique advertisement for BMW rentals from the German car rental company SIXT, photographed at Dusseldorf en route to Essen to attend a conference (Between Fetish and Art: Is Sculpture Transcultural, Global, Universal?)

THE GLOBAL AFRICA PROJECT

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:46:00 +0000

Ongoing at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Global Africa Project exhibition. It's receiving positive reviews from the New York Times, where a critic stated that the show

presents 200 works by nearly 120 people, teams and collectives. It represents artists, designers, artisans, D.I.Y. improvisers and people engaged in various combinations of those already fuzzy job descriptions, toiling in ways that blur aesthetics, sociology and philosophy

Read the full review here. MADmuseum also provided a very helpful Teachers Resource Packet designed for k-12 teaching but useful as a brief introduction to the artists and artwork. Above, an installation view of the exhibition, from the NYTimes.

Happy New Year

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 14:09:00 +0000

Happy New year to everyone. Pictured above: Ogbechie, "Angel of the Morning". Street Art in Los Angeles, 2010.

IM MEMORIAM: ALHAJI CHIEF DR. SIKIRU ANYIDE BARRISTER

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 11:18:00 +0000

Alhaji Chief (Dr.) Sikiru Ayinde Ololade Olayinka Balogun Barrister, popularly known as Chief Sikiru Anyide Barrister (a.k.a. Barry Wonder), was laid to rest at his "Fuji Chambers' residence in Lagos yesterday December 30, 2010. The great Nigerian pop musician and inventor of the popular music genre--Fuji-passed away on December 16 in London after a brief illness. The Ibadan native who went on to global fame was one of the truly significant figures of African popular music in his lifetime. His passing diminishes us greatly and as someone born in the same city—Ibadan—where he was born, his death highlights the increasing loss of learned interlocutors of Ijinle Yoruba (the essence of Yoruba culture) in this context.

African popular music was the first truly global African art form, in the sense of its deep penetration into all spheres and the deep appreciation of audiences across the globe. Central figures of this musical renaissance (to name a few) range from megastars such as Fela, now a household name with a major New York-Broadway play in his honor; King Sunny Ade, the guitar wizard and bandleader; Sade, our very own Diva; the incomparable Ndlovu Miriam Makeba; the dean and doyen of Congolese (Zaire) pop music—Tabu Ley and Mbilia Bel, to the younger generation of African rap music stars in Nigeria, South Africa and other contexts. These artistes play to full houses all across the world and their music pushes against the generally negative image of Africa in the global arena.

I grew up listening to all these musicians and also to very deep genres of Yoruba music in Ibadan, the city of my childhood, in the rapidly changing neighborhood of Oke Ado. Shopkeepers kept up a din of popular music blasting out of loudspeakers facing the street and shops selling music albums (which mostly composed of pirated cassette tapes of important musical acts) advertised their suspect ware with great fanfare. You could hear the newer popular music genres competing with traditional Ewi (poetry) chants but more importantly, listen to the emerging combination of traditional Yoruba music with contemporary music that formed the basis of music by important singers such as Apalamaestro Haruna Ishola, Waka Queen Salawa Abeni, the Chief Commander of Cool Ebenezer Obey, highlife guru I. K. Dairo, and of course, the songmaster himself Sunny Ade.

Anyide Barrister came out of this mix as a young go-getter in the 1970s as an exponent of a form of popular music derived from Were, Sakara, Juju, Apala, Gudugudu and Yoruba praise poems. According to a biography of the artiste,

Chief Doctor Sikiru Ayinde Barrister (born: Sikiru Ayinde) has played an essential role in the evolution of the music of his homeland. The leader of a 25-piece band, the Supreme Fuji Commanders, and a smaller group, the Africa Musical International Ambassadors, Barrister has continued to be one of the leading purveyors of fuji, an exciting, amplified dance music combining juju, apala, and traditional Yoruba blues that he introduced in the late-'70s. Barrister has been singing most of his life. By the age of ten, he had mastered a complex, Yoruban vocal style that was traditionally performed during the holy month of Ramadan. Although he briefly attended a Muslim school, Yaba Polytechnic, in 1961, financial difficulties prevented him from continuing. Leaving school, he found employment as a stenographer. During the Civil War that swept through Nigeria between 1967 and 1970, he served in the Army. Signed by the Nigeria-based Africa Songs, Ltd. label, Barrister recorded many groundbreaking singles during the 1970s and '80s. With his heartfelt vocals set to a rhythmic mix of talking drums, claves, bells, shekere, drum set, and Hawaiian-style guitar, he laid the foundation for fuji, which he named after Mt. Fuji, the Japanese mountain of love. The style has been described as "juju without the guitars" and a "percussion conversation."

Like all families in the area, my parents collected many albums of music from these notable artistes and used these for the myriad social gatherings and parties that were and remain a staple of Yoruba life. You really haven’t partied until you attend a Yoruba social gathering, which are convened to celebrate important events such as birth, funerals and every milestone of life in-between. Quite often, these parties were organized on a large scale, the most popular format being to close off a street at both intersections, throw awnings over the enclosed space and have the party right there. These kinds of parties usually took place at night.

The prevalence of music everywhere in my youth meant I was very attracted to the burgeoning genre of Yoruba pop music. It was literally the soundtrack of my childhood and I have carried the songs inside me since then, playing the few albums I had over and over again until I had all the lyrics memorized. Discovering all these musicians and their songs on YouTube was like stumbling across a very old friend, and this makes YouTube one of the most important technologies of our time. I have since renewed my acquaintance with several of these musical genres and learned of many more musical acts that I remembered dimly.

Sikiru Anyide Barrister will forever be one of my favorite musicians. Although many younger acts have since mutated the Fuji genre he founded into much more scintillating styles of music (for example Shina Peters and Kollington Anyila), I consider Barrister to be peerless in every respect. He was a truly globally aware musician with a very complex cultural background. He worked as a stenographer in his youth and served in the Nigerian army. Barrister spoke flawless Hausa language, was extremely learned in Ewi and indigenous Yoruba panegyrics, and as a devout Muslim, quite learned in Arabic and Koranic verses. He sang sometimes in English (I didn’t much care for such songs: they were vastly inferior to the extraordinary flow of his high-speed Yoruba versemaking), and has performed all over the world to adoring audiences. It is hard not to dance when barrister launches into his fast-paced songs but to get the best sense of his depth as an artist, you need to listen to his slower paced early music when he was still very much channeling extremely cogent Yoruba philosophy.

All things come to an end. Barrister once produced an album-track titled “Agbara Iku” (the Power of Death). He was mourning the death of the great Nigerian soccer player Mudashiru Lawal, of the famed Ibadan Shooting Stars Football Club but you could hear him singing of the inevitability of death for all humans, himself included: “…Ki’se ba se pe to, ki’se ‘yen lo se koko, Oun t’agbe’le Aiye se iyen lo se pataki” (it is not how long we live that is of essence, but how well we do in the span of life we had that’s important). As he noted, there is no stopping death who speaks all languages and doesn’t care for human vanity. The great leveler finally came calling for Alhaji Chief Dr. Sikiru Anyide Barrister. We can take comfort in the versemaker's exemplary achievements and also in knowing that he has ascended to the great concert hall in the sky. Akanbi Opo, Omo Agbajelola Salami ni Ibadan, orun re o!

The attached videos showcases two styles of Sikiru Anyide Barrister's music: one from earlier in his career when he mostly adapted a pop music form derived from indigenous Yoruba musical genres, and the other from his later Fuji genre of music, a fast paced dancehall style invented for urban Lagos but which has since emerged in global space in tandem with the expanding Diaspora of Yoruba and Nigerian peoples.

Give Me What is Mine (apologies Burning Spear)

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 23:16:00 +0000

Thanks to everyone who commented on my post regarding the Benin mask of Idia, and joined the African Cultural Patrimony campaign on Facebook. Sotheby’s issued a terse public statement yesterday canceling their planned sale of the Benin Iyoba Idia mask (the statement suggests that the consignees withdrew the artwork, which to me suggests that Sotheby’s itself is not necessarily concerned about its criminal involvement in the trafficking of stolen cultural patrimony. Would they have gone ahead with the sale if the consignees decided to brazen it out?). In that regard, it seems the massive public outrage of Nigerians and other supporters succeeded in preventing an overt sale of the artwork. Of course, the consignees could simply sell it in private but any museum or private collector that now buys the artwork is knowingly purchasing a contested object. For those who do, we will no doubt see legal challenges to several institutions that hold Benin cultural patrimony in due time.

My post on H-NET attracted responses from Jonathan Fineman and Alexander Soifer. Having never heard of Alexander Soifer before reading his response to my posting on on H-Net, I found rather uninformed the obvious ignorance of his statement that “Cultural Patrimony” debates represent the view of “those who shout loudest the contemporary politically correct slogans”. Demands for restitution of cultural patrimony form the basis of some of the most progressive human rights legislation of the 20th century, especially with regard to the issue of looted Holocaust art. The Nigerian government has been demanding the return of Benin art from Western museums for over fifty years. Far from being politically correct, “demands for restitution and repatriation” are in fact political hot topics, capable of destroying careers. Ungodly sums of money are at stake here and the struggle over ownership of cultural patrimony currently operates as a zero-sum game in which there can only be winners and losers. My goal in engaging this issue, especially regarding looted African cultural patrimony, is to mediate contending claims of both the African creators of these artworks and the Western institutions that currently hold them. However, when these Western institutions act as brazenly as Sotheby’s acted in this instance, it suggests a disregard for the African viewpoint that is as clear as a slap in the face. Moreover, Soifer misses the point of my analysis: while the Nigerian government may claim the Benin works as part of its national patrimony, I have always argued that they are looted private property that rightfully belongs to the reigning king of Benin. Oba Erediauwa has formally demanded that Western museums and collectors return the Benin bronzes. I have written about these demands at length on this blog and have even started an academic journal –Critical Interventions—specifically to engage the issue: the journal inaugurated a formal discourse on the aesthetics, politics and economics of African cultural patrimony as it affects African ownership of the intellectual property rights of its indigenous systems of knowledge and cultural practices. Interestingly enough, the current issue of the journal is in production on the subject of “Who Owns African Cultural Patrimony”.

Soifer’s other questions are a grab bag of the usual objections generally raised by people opposed to discussion of the cultural patrimony issue. These questions have been answered at length elsewhere (See Kwame Opoku’s rebuttals to these objections here and elsewhere online) but briefly: What gives Nigeria the right to the Kingdom of Benin is the same thing that gives any modern state rights over its constituent subjects and regions. If Britain can exercise claims over archaeological sites within its territory and France over the Lascaux caves, there is no reason Nigeria should not exercise a claim to antiquities found within its national borders. If Nigerian courts were to decide the issue of the Benin bronzes, they will undoubtedly rule in favor of returning them to Nigeria, in the same manner that British courts largely rule in favor of Britain. This merely demonstrates the inadequacy of current legal structures because it does not allow for interpretations outside of those established through British jurisprudence. We need a new way of dealing with African cultural patrimony issues that respects the rights of Africans to their bodies and resources.

How far back should we go to resolve cultural patrimony issues? As far back as is needed: the issue here is not mere repatriation of artworks, but ownership of the economic value and equity created by these artworks as a result of their current and future financial value. There is also the important issue of ownership of the intellectual property rights of these artworks, which should accrue to the Benin people by right. In other words, we need to go as far back enough as is necessary to obviate the loss of value and equity arising from the relocation of the bronze artworks from Benin to the West. Otherwise, we condemn Africans to a permanent underclass status and conversely support a clearly demonic order in which Western countries claim natural right of might to control and exploit the African continent. I don’t see how one can defend the status quo given the atrocities visited upon Africa in the past few centuries. This history is still largely unaccounted for.

Which laws should prevail? So far, Africans have argued for their basic human rights in courts based on Western laws. If human rights laws are international, perhaps we should subject Western brigandage in Africa to African laws. The traditional penalty for invading the privacy of the Oba of Benin was death. This is why the original British envoys to Benin were killed: they had been warned not to enter the kingdom but were outraged that a mere African king should dictate to her majesty’s emissaries. By Benin law, anyone except the King or high priests who touches the ancestral altars automatically received a death sentence. Would anyone support the right of the Benin king to enforce this hallowed traditional law by condemning to death the curators and dealers who handle the Benin bronzes in various contexts? Of course not, but you keep hearing arguments that we should respect Western claims to African cultural patrimony merely because the artworks are currently located in Western museums and institutions. Moreover, Western courts have consistently failed Africans. Remember that Slavery, Apartheid, Jim Crow laws, and a host of other odious legislation that rendered Africans subhuman were once very legal in most Western countries. However, Africans are asked to continue to plead for their human rights in Western courts based on laws that supported their dispossession in the first place. This is like asking a victim to submit to a court controlled by relatives of his attacker. It is unjust and as Augustine of Hippo stated, an unjust law is no law at all.

Finally, Soifer raises the linchpin of all anti-repatriation arguments: if the artworks are returned to Africa, they will merely be stolen by Africans and resold to Western collectors. Maybe, but that is no reason to refuse to negotiate the return of the artworks. In a world in which all sorts of things are being trafficked, there can be no guarantee that repatriated African artworks will not be stolen. However, if scholars stop validating stolen artworks by refusing to write about them, and museums refuse to exhibit them, it might mitigate the allure of these artworks for art thieves and the disreputable dealers and collectors who traffic in stolen African cultural patrimony. But then this is the usual strategy of holding Africans to impossible standards: art theft is a global problem. Soifer should explain to me what measures of protection he suggests to stem the ongoing theft of art in Western museums and private collections. Interpol estimates about 34,000 stolen artworks are still missing, despite the gabililions of dollars spent on museum security everywhere (see the various art-loss registers online).

Jonathan Fine’s response was more significant, in that it shows some knowledge of the legal issues involved. The legal status of the Benin bronzes and the legality of trading in these contested commodities have never been adjudicated in a court of law. For the past three years, I have searched for a law firm in the USA willing to take on a test case on this issue to no avail. Obviously the cost of bringing such a case is far beyond personal means but I am confident in due time that a legal case will be made. For now, current laws protect Western collectors of these artworks whose “ownership” rests on assumptions that they acquired the artworks legally. They did not, and there is no case here that the legal owner of the artworks did not make an effort to recover them. All the Benin kings since Ovonramwen have called for return of the artworks to no avail.

I also disagree with Fine’s suggestion that “cultural patrimony” is the wrong lens through which we can view the issue. I have argued for the issue of stolen Benin bronzes as a case of clear theft of property. Since the British never formally declared war on Benin in 1897, we cannot view the subsequent looting of the King’s palace as “spoils of war”. I believe a legal case can be made that most of the other African artworks “collected” during colonial control of African countries were expropriated by coercion and plunder: colonized populations are victims of aggression and cannot be said to have acquiesced in the transfer of their artworks even if they sold them to the collector themselves. The reason is that transactions of this sort that occur under duress are ipso facto illegal. By dealing with this issue as a cultural patrimony issue, we draw attention to the mass plunder of African cultural resources in the same manner that its natural and human resources were plundered for the economic gain of various Western countries. In this regard, I have started a series of posts to the African Cultural Patrimony Facebook page to demonstrate the human cost of how various European colonizers collected artworks from various parts of Africa (click on “Photo Albums” here). This narrative is usually written out of our analysis of the artworks but they are relevant because the processes involved are quite traumatic. The point is that the colonial destruction of indigenous African cultures was a systemic protocol designed to render indigenous cultures bereft of life and liberty. Tons of artworks were destroyed and the remaining relocated to Western collections.

On the specific issue of the Benin bronzes, there can be no legal transfer of the stolen artworks objects while the rightful owners of the stolen objects are actively calling for their restitution. The Benin bronzes are not an amorphous product of “African art”. They are private property, bought by and paid for by the Benin kings through massive expenditure of national treasure, and constitute the wealth of the kingdom. These bronzes were commissioned for specific historical events, the artists who produced them were paid for their work, and the artworks were used in very prescribed manner and also as a store of value. The looting and dispersal of the Benin bronzes deprived the Benin king of his private property and deprives his descendants of equity in this stolen property. It deprives Benin people of any chance to benefit in any economic, political social or cultural manner from the value produced by these artworks and further denies them equal access to these artworks. Aside from what they see in images of the artworks in Western museums, young Benin people have no way of benefiting from the products of their ancestors. The artworks generate income for the various museums that hold them but this is not in any way shared with the Benin king of his heirs.

The rallying cry for the African cultural patrimony campaign is “equal access to the artworks and equal value for the producers of the artworks”. This is because the location of Benin cultural patrimony in Western museums and private collections prevents the emergence of objects on equal value in Benin or other parts of Africa. Usually, scholars are quick to deride newer Benin bronze artworks as “fakes” which helps to sustain and increase the value of those Benin bronzes that can be traced back to the 1897 plunder of Benin. In this manner, the initial act of theft and vandalism is used as the primary context for validating the originality of Benin bronze arts in different auctions and museums. The bronze objects produced in Benin since the invasion are therefore prevented from gaining value mainly by being derided as products located outside the corpus of Benin art. More importantly, the claim that Western institutions that hold these artworks are “universal museums” holding the objects in trust for “mankind” is pure bumkum. The fact that Britain passed laws explicitly forbidding repatriation of artworks from the British museum shows that it regards the collection as an indispensable aspect of its imperial history. While the collection is accessible to international audiences that have the requisite access to global travel, it is not accessible to 99.999% of Africans who are unable to travel freely across international borders. As a matter of fact, there is no Western nation (including the USA) that will grant a Benin person a visa merely to visit the British museum for the purposes of viewing the bronzes, which enforces an active denial of access to the artworks to Benin peoples.

There are more practical matters at stake here and some of them are listed below.
FINANCIAL: The African cultural patrimony issue is as much a financial issue as any other. The possession of stolen Benin bronzes has financially enriched various Western museums. The current campaign that stopped Sotheby’s proposed sale of the Benin Idia mask also highlights this fact: it was expected the auction would fetch as much as 4.5 million British pounds. Recognizing the financial aspect of this issue shifts discussion about stolen African cultural patrimony away from abstract moral arguments about right and wrong to the more important argument about the financial impoverishment of Africans resulting from long-term Western looting of African resources. The estimated value of stolen African cultural patrimony in Western museums and private collections is worth several billions of dollars. This rises considerably if the economic benefit of holding stolen African cultural patrimony is factored into the discussion, i.e. the boost in tourism from viewing these artworks for instance, as well as the economic value from their sale, insurance, exhibition, publication and collection.

DISCURSIVE/ACADEMIC: The study of Benin art has been skewed by the dispersal of Benin cultural patrimony which has had the effect of locating Benin studies in the West and depriving Benin people any chance to develop their own discursive platforms. There is a need to redirect Benin studies (and African art studies in general) to take greater cognizance of actual cultural developments in Benin/Africa rather than its current focus of studying the reception of Benin art in the West. In this regard, the British invasion denied the Benin kingdom a chance to define its own destiny.

HUMAN RIGHTS: The looting of Africa to sustain the West is now a human rights issue. The looting of the bronzes from Benin in 1897 was accompanied by genocide resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Benin people during the British invasion, and countless more as a result of the scorched earth policy that the British army put in place for six months while they were trying to apprehend Oba Ovonramwen. The invasion destroyed the economic foundations of the Benin kingdom, reduced its inhabitants to penury and forced it into the British colonial state of Nigeria. More importantly, the artworks from Benin were flagrantly sold without consideration of their status as stolen goods. Specifically, the ivory pendant mask of Queen Mother IDIA was taken from Oba Ovonramwen’s bedroom; the other three were taken from his regalia when he surrendered to the British.

CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF THE ARTWORKS: The Benin corpus is the most clearly articulated case of stolen African cultural patrimony extant. The artworks were safeguarded in the palace of the Benin kings for over 500 years (ivory sculptures are even older than the bronzes) before they were plundered. If the British invasion did not occur, it is quite believable that they would still be secured in the palace using strategies that kept them safe for centuries. In any case, it is significant because if we can’t prove the African ownership of this corpus in a case as clear-cut as this one, then proving other cases may be nigh impossible.

CULTURAL: The current Benin King is interested in building a museum in Benin to showcase Eight Centuries of Edo/Benin cultural development. A way of resolving the issue of repatriation is to design a system of circulation that will allow the artworks to be shown periodically in Benin. If the king secures their repatriation, they can be exhibited in the new museum. More importantly, any settlement reached would need to be crafted to include international oversight of managing the museum in Benin and allowing it to share in exhibitions of the artworks (under firm agreements) thus giving younger generations of Benin people a chance to benefit from the cultural products of their ancestors.

I don’t deny that a successful legal challenge to recover the Benin bronzes appears improbable at this time. What is vital is that we must end once and for all the comfortable disregard for African claims to their looted cultural patrimony and disdain for those who dare raise this issue. The demand for cultural patrimony repatriation and restitution is one of the principal issues of this age. To think otherwise is to be foolhardy.

"Exhibition Showcases The Art of Nollywood"

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 17:31:00 +0000

New York (CNN) -- A group of artists is bringing Nigerian movie making to a new audience with a New York exhibition paying tribute to the "Nollywood" film industry. The exhibition is called "Sharon Stone in Abuja," after a 2003 Nollywood film, and is taking place at Location One gallery in the Soho district of New York.... (read the full article here). See CNN video here.

Merry Christmas...

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 14:23:00 +0000

Dawn Fog, Getty Gardens, May 2010.

Join "African Cultural Patrimony" on Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 19:03:00 +0000

I have created a Facebook page for advocacy on the issue of African Cultural Patrimony. All are invited to join and post relevant information.

SOTHEBY'S IS TRAFFICIKING IN STOLEN BENIN ARTWORKS

noreply@blogger.com (S. Okwunodu Ogbechie) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:52:00 +0000

A colleague brought to my attention Sotheby’s impending sale of yet another piece of Benin cultural patrimony. I read the announcement of the sale and was struck by its brazenness. Sotheby's is trafficking in stolen goods and it is doing so without any concern for the fact of its brazen criminality. It is clear that the Benin artworks are a contested collection of cultural artifacts. The history of their plunder from Benin is not in doubt, and the Benin Kingdom has never at any time given up its claim to these artworks. There has been significant amount of words written about the history of the British plunder of Benin and why the artworks should be repatriated. How is it then that despite the constant requests for the repatriation of these artworks and their clear identification as stolen goods, they continue to be sold by firms such as Sotheby’s without any hesitation?

The Benin art corpus is known by everyone to have been stolen from Benin in 1897, and ironically, their history of being plundered is the main prop used to affirm their authenticity in all the sales of these artworks for over 100 years. The legal issue here is quite simple: is it ever possible to have legal ownership of a stolen good? In other words, if an artwork or piece of property is clearly identified as a stolen item, can anyone other than the known owner of that stolen item ever have a valid legal claim to it? Western institutions that hold African cultural patrimony seem to believe they can legally own stolen goods and so far haven't shown any willingness to examine their shameful actions in this regard.

The Sotheby's announcement makes a point of stating that the mask and five other Benin objects will be sold by descendants of Sir Henry Gallway, who participated in the looting of Benin city in 1897. All the Benin objects identified in the proposed sale are clearly identified as belonging to Benin kings who did not cede their title to the artworks to anyone (the coerced abdication of the Benin throne enforced by the invading British would be illegal in any court today: in 1991, the USA went to war to prevent Iraq from annexing Kuwait based on such principles). There is also no doubt that all Benin artworks in any museum of institution in the world belongs to His Highness, Oba Erediauwa, great grandson of Oba Ovonramwen and the reigning kind of Benin. Despite all this facts, the descendants of a known British thief and vandal who stole the Idia mask from Benin stand to make between 3.5 and 4.5 million British pounds on the sale of an artwork commissioned and paid for by a Benin king (Esigie), which was a representation of his mother (Iyoba Idia) was used as part of the royal regalia of an existing kingdom, while it is clear no single penny will accrue to the Benin king or his descendants from the sale of this item of cultural heritage.

The Benin kingdom and other wellwishers have mounted various legal challenges to the ownership and sales of Benin artworks by various Western institutions. So far, all these challenges have been dismissed without being given a proper hearing. I have reviewed some of these challenges and the possibility of bringing a new legal challenge through American courts and found that it is quite impossible to challenge these matters in court. The legal process here is very expensive and the barriers to getting your day in court are often too high to bear. Moreover, Africans are forced to prove their claims in courts constituted primarily to legally dispossess them of claims to their lives, bodies and natural resources. In the meantime, Western institutions continue to profit from African life and labor. Think about it: millions of Africans were sold into slavery and African land and natural resources were plundered to finance the Western ascendancy of the past five hundred years. Today, African resources continue to support Western development while the continent remains the poorest on the planet. The plunder of cultural resources deprives Africans of their history and of the economic value and equity of their cultural patrimony: all these flow into the coffers of Western institutions without bringing a single economic benefit to the African contexts of their production.

Leaving aside the ongoing looting of the continent and continued use of its inhabitants as guinea pigs by various Western corporations, I think the greatest error that has been made in scholarly studies of African artworks and cultural patrimony is the pervasive idea that African artworks are products of nebulous “community action”. Artworks from Africa are always stripped of their links to particular individuals and economic contexts by their identification as the product of a group ethos. The Benin people did not create the artworks in question here: the pectoral masks of Iyoba Idia were created by specific Benin kings as part of the state’s political and economic obligations. It was stolen from the bedroom of Oba Ovonramwen in 1897. For over six hundred years, Benin kings spent huge portions of the national wealth supporting the creation of lavish artworks and sustaining the specialized guilds that made these artworks. You can still see descendants of the guilds in Benin. African artworks were commissioned by various individuals and institutions, paid for in very real economic terms, and then incorporated into the cultural equity of the individuals and institutions that commissioned them. These artworks are not random creations: they were part of complex systems of knowledge management and economic exchange. Their plunder left their owners significantly poorer. It is tragic that the descendants of the thieves who stole these artworks from Africa should so brazenly benefit from their plunder when the descendants of the Africans who created the artworks receive no share at all in their economic value.

Some commentators have suggested that Africans should try to buy back their stolen artworks when these come to public auction. I consider such suggestions preposterous since it allows the vandals who plundered Africa to benefit from their plunder twice over. When Britain and other colonial powers pay restitution to Africa for the rape of the continent,then I will entertain such suggestions. In the absence of any real compensation for centuries of plunder and genocide against Africans, raising this issue at all is clearly a racist form of responsibility avoidance.

All across the world today, many stolen artworks are being repatriated to their countries of origins. No one is asking the cultural owners of these artworks to pay for the privilege of retrieving their ancestors' properties. Therefore, the relevant issue is whether Africans have any legal rights to their lives, natural and cultural resources. At what point does the brazen dispossession of Africa become a significant political, economic and moral issue? The Sotheby's sale is part of a broad disregard for the very real impact of dispossession on the reality and fortunes of black Africans today. There is no justice here and it does not appear that black Africans or their descendants will be afforded any kind of legal justice in the prevailing context of white Western power. And yes, this is clearly a racial issue. Zahi Hawass has by and large stopped Western institutions from brazenly trafficking in Egyptian artifacts. He continues to negotiate the return of large numbers of looted Egyptian artworks back to Egypt. Most of these artworks were removed from Egypt more than 250 years ago. Italy has repatriated artworks to Libya. Western museums have repatriated artworks to South Africa. But so far, all requests for repatriation or reparation by black Africans have been dismissed without hearing. This is not surprising: African Americans have so far only received an apology for their centuries –long enslavement and, through their overwhelming imprisonment, they continue to fatten the coffers of modern-day slaveholders who run various prisons in the USA. There has never been any Western country held accountable for their actions in Africa, not even Belgium that oversaw the genocide of close to 10 million Congolese between 1880 and 1920. Sotheby's multi-million dollar sale of stolen Benin artwork would seem insignificant within such a list of atrocities against Africa but make no mistake, it is part of the same current of morally and ethically dubious actions unfolding without any regard at all for African concerns.

It is therefore time for all Africans who have the resources to contribute to a massive effort to bring the global legal system to bear on these institutions who traffic in stolen African cultural patrimony. There are already precedents: the Holocaust reparation legal challenge is a clear precedence; so is the Native American Graves Repatriation and Protection Act. The issue of African cultural patrimony is an urgent human rights issue. Africans deserve equal access to and equal share of the economic value of artworks created by their ancestors. More importantly, they deserve to have a say in what happens to these artworks in the contemporary era. These artworks arrived in the West on a boat of plunder and bloodshed. Uncountable numbers of African lives were destroyed in the avaricious pursuit of colonization by Western powers. There needs to be an accounting for this history. Western institutions like Sotheby’s that broker the sale of these artworks should also cease and desist. They may not be legally liable for their actions today, but they will be legally liable at some time in the future.