In October 2009, the University of East Anglia established a Centre for African Art and Archaeology to reflect the strong convergence of research and teaching interests related to Africa, in the School of World Art Studies and Museology.
Image: House painting in Senegal
Currently, five members of the School and the Sainsbury Research Unit (SRU) belong to the Centre, with primary research interests in the visual and material culture of Africa. African arts also play a major role in the collections of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (SCVA), which share the School's home in the Norman Foster-designed Sainsbury Centre building. The newly developed Centre for African Art and Archaeology will coordinate this assemblage of interests, bringing together the activities of staff and students to foster the development of research and teaching on the arts, archaeology, and cultural heritage of the African continent.
Africanist members of staff who are part of the new Centre include:
Dr Jo Clarke, an archaeologist with extensive fieldwork experience in Western Sahara, Cyprus, and Israel. Her most recent research is concerned with current approaches to the study of long-term changes in the technologies of early agricultural communities, specifically basketry, plaster and pottery. Presently she is co-directing a multi-disciplinary project in the Western Sahara, examining the long-term adaptation of human populations to the drying of the environment in the mid Holocene.
Dr Anne Haour, an archaeologist who focuses on the archaeology of Sahelian West Africa, has conducted excavations in Niger that explore the creation and maintenance of boundaries, the interrelation of archaeological and historical data in descriptions of ‘empires’, and the materialisation of contacts through material culture. She has also collaborated with anthropologist colleagues on topics relating to present-day Africa, such as religion and change among the Hausa or modern-day apprenticeship in pottery decoration.These are all questions to be considered in a new project funded by the European Research Council from 2011 to 2016.
Dr Ferdinand de Jong, an anthropologist whose teaching and research interests concern the anthropology of art and material culture, contemporary African art, memory and heritage, has conducted extensive fieldwork in Senegal. He is currently writing a book on heritage and memory in postcolonial Senegal, focusing on World Heritage sites and the commemorations performed there. Previously, he has also researched masquerades and initiation ceremonies and has published on globalisation, cultural politics and a Senegalese museum.
Professor John Mack FBA was formerly Keeeper of the Ethnography Department of the British Museum and Director of the Museum of Mankind. His research has focused on Congo, southern Sudan, Kenya, Madagascar and Zanzibar, taking a broadly anthropological approach to art, material culture and archaeology. Recent books have discussed questions of memory and art, and the process of miniaturisation and current projects include experiences of the sea, religious change in northern Kenya and participating in a major UEA study of basketry.
Dr Christina Riggs, a specialist in ancient Egyptian art, addresses questions about identity, gender, the body, funerary commemoration and the shaping of collective memory through the re-use, copying or adaptation of earlier works of art. Currently she is exploring the ‘mummiform’ image in ancient Egypt, whereby certain divinities, and the dead, were depicted shrouded in linen. This image has complex associations in Egyptian culture and also exemplifies the importance of secrecy as an organising principle in Egyptian society.
Members of academic staff in the School who are affiliates of the new Centre include:
Dr Simon Dell (20th century: the reception of African Art in Europe)
Professor Sandy Heslop (‘Traditional’ and contemporary African Art)
See the Events pages for up-to-date listings of Centre events.
Past events include:
- An Artist's Talk by Atta Kwame
- In conversation with Enid Schildkrout, Chief Curator of the Museum for African Art, New York
- Ceri Ashley, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, University College London - Migration, Missionaries and Contact: Recent research on the archaeology of the Khwebe Hills, Botswana.
- Lisa Binder, Assistant Curator for Contemporary Africa at the Museum for African Art, New York - The life and times of a young curator in New York City.
Enquiries about the Centre and its programmes may be made to its Secretary, Dr Anne Haour, a.haour@uea.ac.uk.
