Shifting Views: People & Politics in Contemporary African Art is the third in a series of thematic exhibitions of African art installed in the Baltimore Museum of Art's (BMA) new Focus Gallery. The gallery debuted with Diverging Streams: Eastern Nigerian Art (April 26, 2015–April 17, 2016) followed by Design for Mobile Living: Art from Eastern Africa (June 1–November 27, 2016). Located adjacent to the recently (April 2015) reopened renovated and expanded galleries for African art, its 680 square feet fosters an intimate space for engagement through close looking, finding connections, critical thinking, and quiet reflection (Fig. 1).
Shifting Views, curated by Shannon Hill, Associate Curator for African Arts, with Kevin Tervala, former Curatorial Fellow in the Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Pacific Islands, features twenty-four works on paper by seven artists from the museum's growing collection of contemporary art: David Goldblatt, Gavin Jantjes, William Kentridge,...