all images courtesy the Newark Museum of Art
Since my earliest days as a student of African art, I have been interested in the history of collecting and exhibiting Africa's arts in the West and, by extension, the politics of representation. This research interest has been, for me, not just academic. My curatorial practice has been shaped by a historical and theoretical understanding of Western museums and museology. This, in turn, has heightened my awareness of institutional contexts and how curators contribute to the production of knowledge about, and reception of, African art. The unconventional history and collection of the Newark Museum (renamed the Newark Museum of Art in 2019) in New Jersey, where I served as a curator for sixteen years, afforded me the latitude to challenge the temporal and geographic boundaries that have long defined Africa's arts in museums. This essay looks back at how I responded to,...