Doran Ross was arguably the leading scholar of Akan art and visual culture, who, over the course of a very productive forty-five-year career, published eight books, over forty articles and book chapters, and countless shorter pieces dealing with the arts of the Akan and, on occasion, other parts of Ghana. References to his scholarship abound in the works of many scholars who have been writing about Akan art over the last half century, including the two of us. Rather than simply enumerate the contributions that Doran has made to Akan visual studies, we decided to present an edited transcription of a conversation we had in April 2021 that provided us the opportunity to reflect upon both our personal memories of Doran as well as the impact his writing and curatorial projects have had on the field of African art history. For those readers who might be interested, we have provided,...
Doran Ross: The Scholar of Akan Art
Nii Quarcoopome holds a doctorate in African art history from UCLA. Since 1993, he has worked as: assistant professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1990–1998); curator, Art of Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas, Newark Museum (2000–2002); and department head, Africa, Oceania, and Indigenous Americas and co-chief curator, Detroit Institute of Arts (2002-present). His professional accomplishments include the American Association of Museums’ highest recognition for excellence for his exhibition Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500-Present; Smithsonian, Fulbright, and J. Paul Getty fellowships (1998–2000); and National Endowment of the Humanities exhibition grant. NQuarcoopome@dia.org
Raymond Silverman, a historian of the visual cultures of Africa, is professor emeritus of History of Art, African Studies, and Museum Studies at University of Michigan. His research and writing explore historical and contemporary visual practices in Ethiopia and Ghana and museum and heritage discourse in Africa. Silvermans recent work focuses on the visual culture of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Ethiopian Church Art: Painters, Patrons, Purveyors (in press). Additional publications include National Museums in Africa: Identity, History and Politics (2021), Museum as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledges (2015), Painting Ethiopia: The Life and Work of Qes Adamu Tesfaw (2005), and Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity (1999). silveray@umich.edu
Nii Quarcoopome holds a doctorate in African art history from UCLA. Since 1993, he has worked as: assistant professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1990–1998); curator, Art of Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas, Newark Museum (2000–2002); and department head, Africa, Oceania, and Indigenous Americas and co-chief curator, Detroit Institute of Arts (2002-present). His professional accomplishments include the American Association of Museums’ highest recognition for excellence for his exhibition Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500-Present; Smithsonian, Fulbright, and J. Paul Getty fellowships (1998–2000); and National Endowment of the Humanities exhibition grant. NQuarcoopome@dia.org
Raymond Silverman, a historian of the visual cultures of Africa, is professor emeritus of History of Art, African Studies, and Museum Studies at University of Michigan. His research and writing explore historical and contemporary visual practices in Ethiopia and Ghana and museum and heritage discourse in Africa. Silvermans recent work focuses on the visual culture of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Ethiopian Church Art: Painters, Patrons, Purveyors (in press). Additional publications include National Museums in Africa: Identity, History and Politics (2021), Museum as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledges (2015), Painting Ethiopia: The Life and Work of Qes Adamu Tesfaw (2005), and Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity (1999). silveray@umich.edu
Nii O. Quarcoopome, Raymond Silverman; Doran Ross: The Scholar of Akan Art. African Arts 2022; 55 (1): 20–25. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00627
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