Clark/Mellon Workshops

One of the major initiatives sponsored by the generous grant to the Clark’s Research and Academic Program is the Clark/Mellon Workshop, jointly organized with the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Contemporary African Art: History, Theory, and Practice: A Workshop

"Contemporary African Art: History, Theory, and Practice" was a workshop organized by the Research and Academic Program of the Clark and the Wits School of the Arts at the University of Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg, South Africa. This project, undertaken with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, examined more than forty years of art historical scholarship about modern and contemporary African art. The two components of the workshop, international gatherings of distinguished scholars and artists, took place in 2007 and 2008. The initial phase of the workshop was held at WITS (October 25–28, 2007), and the second phase at the Clark in Williamstown, Massachusetts (May 22–25, 2008). This was followed by a Getty-funded residency for African participants in Williamstown and New York City from May 25–30.

"Contemporary African Art" addressed several pointed commissions in art historical scholarship regarding modern and contemporary African art. Continental in scope, it included the participation of scholars working on key artists and art movements from Egypt to South Africa, from Senegal to Kenya. Many exhibitions and accompanying catalogues have largely focused on Nigerian and/or South African artists and have largely ignored the prolific and important contributions of African artists of Arab descent and/or African artists of South Asian descent, for example. This project addressed a diversity of under-explored ethnic and geographical areas in terms of scholarship within the field. In addition, it presented the work of scholars focused on a broad range of oft-neglected African artists, art movements, and collectives such as the Dakar Biennales and Morocco’s L’appartment 22.

Workshop participants included the following scholars: Meskerem Assegued (Zoma Contemporary Art Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), Allan de Souza (San Francisco Art Institute), Elizabeth Harney (University of Toronto), Salah Hassan (Cornell University), Abdellah Karroum (L’appartement 22, Rabat, Morocco), David Koloane (artist), Yacouba Konate (University of Cocody, Abidjan, Ivory Coast), Gabi Ngcobo (independent curator, Cape Town, South Africa), Steven Nelson (University of California, Los Angeles), Chika Okeke-Agulu (Clark Fellow, 2007-2008, and Princeton University), Colin Richards (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa), Sunanda K. Sanyal (Art Institute of Boston), and Jessica Winegar (Temple University). Workshop session topics, representing key issues in the field, were as follows: "Pedagogy: Art and Art History in Africa"; "Patronage: State, Private, Museology, and Publications"; "Curatorial Practices and the Politics of Representation in Contemporary African Art"; "Art and Post-Apartheid South Africa"; "The Transnational Issues"; "Gender: New Frontiers, Imperatives, and Scholarship"; "Comparative Issues"; and "New Directions in the Field: A Roundtable."