Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi. Photo by Franko Khoury, National Museum of African Art. Image via artdaily.org. |
From artdaily.org:
The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College has appointed Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi as its
first Curator of African Art. A specialist in modern and contemporary African
and African Diaspora arts, Nzewi will be responsible for the documentation,
preservation, research, and development of the museum’s African art
collection—which encompasses some 1,900 historic and contemporary objects from
all regions of the continent in a variety of media—and will engage Dartmouth
faculty and students in the development of curricular and co-curricular
programming related to the museum’s African holdings. He will begin on August
26, 2013.
“Smooth’s
deep knowledge of historical African objects, combined with his unique
perspective on African contemporary art, makes him an ideal appointment for the
position of Curator of African Art at the Hood,” said Michael Taylor, Director
of the Hood Museum of Art. “The establishment of this new position affirms the
Hood’s aspiration to build an exceptional collection of African art from all
time periods and cultures, and to showcase that collection through
groundbreaking exhibition and educational programs that inform a greater
understanding of the artistic traditions of the African continent, both past
and present.”
Born in
Nigeria, Nzewi received his Ph.D. in Art History at Emory University, where he
wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Dak’Art Biennial and its influence on
contemporary African art, from 1992 to the present. He was awarded a
Pre-Doctoral Fellowship from the National Museum of African Arts, Smithsonian
Institution, in 2012, and earned a postgraduate diploma in the African Program
in Museum and Heritage Studies from the University of Western Cape, South Africa.
He has curated exhibitions in Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, and the United
States, including most recently Transitions: Contemporary South African Works
on Paper at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2009 and Windows Part 1: New
Works by Ndary Lo as part of the fringe exhibitions of the Dak’Art Biennial in
2012. A practicing visual artist, Nzewi studied sculpture under the supervision
of El Anatsui at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he earned a B.A. in
Fine and Applied Art. He has participated in over thirty exhibitions and artist
residency programs in Africa, Europe, and the United States, and, in 2011, he
received the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation Fellowship for African Artists.
“I am
truly honored to accept the Curator of African Art position at the Hood Museum
of Art. The Hood has a fantastic history and arguably one of the oldest and
finest museum collections of African art on any campus in North America. I am
coming to the Hood at a very auspicious moment of exciting possibilities, when
it is expanding its facility and growing its African collection. I am excited
to be joining the curatorial staff at the Hood and to be able to contribute to
the vibrant arts community at Dartmouth,” said Nzewi. “The Hood is noted for
encouraging a diversity of peoples and perspectives and for placing the art
object at the center of the educational experience. I look forward to working
with students, faculty, and staff in the development of programming that will
bring to life a greater appreciation and understanding of art from Africa,
whether it be contemporary or traditional creations.”
The Hood’s
African art collection represents the great range of artistic expression,
media, and aesthetics on the African continent, and its objects date from
approximately 2040 BCE to the present. The collection has its roots in the
first decades of the nineteenth century, when works from ancient Egypt were
acquired by Dartmouth, and it expanded significantly in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries to include works from sub-Saharan Africa, beginning
with a gift of forty-eight objects from South Africa in 1885 by Josiah Tyler,
missionary and son of Dartmouth College President Bennett Tyler. Significant
gifts made during the second half of the twentieth century enhanced the
collection in colonial-era sculpture from West and Central Africa, including
approximately fifty sculptural works given by Evelyn A. and William B. Jaffe,
Class of 1964H, during the 1960s and 1970s; almost two hundred brass castings,
primarily used as body ornamentation, given by Arnold and Joanne Syrop in the
1980s and 1990s; and about eighty sculptures from the Harry A. Franklin Family
Collection in the 1990s. Recent additions to the collection of sculptural works
from East Africa further diversify the Hood’s collection of African art. A new
direction for the museum is represented by the addition of contemporary works
by African and African diasporic artists over the past decade, including art by
El Anatsui, Magdalene Odundo, and Wangechi Mutu, among others.
Fabulous!! Encouraging!!!
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