Transcript for Episode 150 – Curator of African Art, Dr. Amanda M. Maples (USA + Germany)
Recorded February 7, 2021
Published February 25, 2021
Transcript of Episode 150 – Curator of African Art, Dr. Amanda M. Maples (USA + Germany)
MATT: Could you please pronounce your name correctly for me
AMANDA: Amanda Marie Maples
MATT: Now you’re a doctor, correct. So you’re actually Dr. Amanda Maples.
AMANDA: Yes, indeed. Yeah, and they they care about that here in Germany. I haven’t used it so much as I have in last year here where a few months I guess. guess.
MATT: Oh, yeah. Titles are very important in Europe for sure like manager is one that I’ve noticed MGR is very popular here. Your background so you know, how did you you are a curator of African art as your primary interest, correct?
AMANDA: That’s right. Yes. Okay. So what was your childhood like that led you up to the path of becoming even a curator much less a curator of something as specific as African art
AMANDA: right? I get that question a lot and I even wonder how I ended up here. So I grew up in rural North Carolina in the Eastern side of it and I didn’t know anything about Africa let alone anthropology or even art historyI am from a fairly for poor county in North Carolina. So the education wasn’t super strong so I didn’t really know much of what was out there until I got to college and that’s when I first started taking anthropology. I will say when I was a kid. I was in the in the gifted program. So I got bussed over to an elementary school a couple of times a week where I got to really explore some of my own interests and that was a really Amazing experience. So it’s a such a young age. It’s funny that the entire school system only had one school for all of us. Like we would all come in from different schools into this one program. But at that time I was was really interested in archaeology. Like, I wanted to be a paleontologist specifically that’s what I interested in and I don’t think I got too far off the mark I ended up going towards archaeology in college and then I went to South Africa to get my field School in archaeology that was in 2001 to date myself a little bit. I think that’s when I started gravitating towards the continent and learning much more about a history that has been obscured from our educational system for so many reasons and in so many ways including that of the diaspora. So yeah, I wanted to be a paleontologist than I would be an archaeologist that I ended up working with art. So it’s not too far away though because objects are so Central to museum practice and to archaeology obviously. So for me one of the most amazing things that happened when I was in South Africa doing that dig . It was a Middle Stone Age site was touching an object that had not been touched by any other human for a thousand years and that just blew my mind. So, you know being able to connect to one object like that tangibly to tell you a story or to site your interest that to me was really powerful and I think that’s when I started gravitating even more towards museums and I just sort of ended up in African art we can talk a bit more about that. But I guess that’s my more early experience and how I kind of I meandered towards African art if you will.
MATT: Well, I meandered when I was young as well. I studied with a Cherokee Shaman at one point. I did an archaeological dig out in the Anasazi area and I went to University of Iowa with the intention of being a Native American Studies major and then I got there and they said oh, yeah, we’re just starting that program. It’ll take another like four to six years before you can get a degree and I’m like fuck. But I I was as interested in Psychology and Native American studies and all the other stuff like that. But but I ended up not going into it, for the listener to be clear about this, you’re a white girl from rural North Carolina who has chosen to study African art. Do you have any people that question those choices?
AMANDA: You’re getting right in there? I love it. Yeah. Absolutely. It’s I am a white woman. Trying to present the Arts of Africa to a primarily white audience at the North Carolina Museum of Art. So yes, it’s something I think about very deeply and especially the last year or two would museums Museum practitioners curators are all coming increasingly more and more Under Fire for the hand that we’ve had in normalizing cultural stereotypes for the sort of a single stories that we inevitably tell because in trying to show the Arts of Africa you collapse identity you sort of flatten it out. Right? So I I think about that all the time and I’m am being questioned and I teach so I teach at UNC Chapel Hill, I’ve taught at UC Santa Cruz where I got my PhD there’s always at least one. If not up to a handful particularly in California California of especially young women that question me, and they give me side-eye when a white woman comes in and goes guess what you’re able to learn about African art from a white lady. I think it’s a tricky position to be in. Because this wasn’t a problem when I started studying African art and it only has been increasingly problematic in the last year or two, of course with the the protests with this kind of looking at Social Justice and Equitable representation, etcetera. It’s all right. It’s all spot-on and decolonization is a big effort that I’m part of but do I have to abandon the fifteen, sixteen years of work and this powerful art form that that means so much to me. I don’t think so. But it also betrays a much larger problem in art history, which is only, I think it’s like 8% or something small of curators across the board not just an African art or Art of Color. So it’s a much bigger problem than just an African art. It’s also a centralizing and problematic to think that because someone is of color or of African descent that they care about African art. So I think that there’s multiple problems that run a lot deeper and also the problem is about access. So if you need a PhD to become a curator like me are those gilded Halls of Academia open to everyone, not so much. Similarly, museums have been places of elitism that also means that not everyone feels welcome or would even want to work in museums. We need to change things at a much much deeper level. So I talked about all of that very openly and I think I’m at a position where I feel like rather than being the one voice that’s representing an entire continent worth of art over thousands of years, which is already fucking Bonkers to think about we should have many many many people trying to think about African art in any single institution, but you know, that’s pie-in-the-sky. I talk about it very openly and I think of myself as a conduit rather than that single voice. So if I’m just the person in this position, I have the opportunity then to invite as many other voices as possible into the gallery space into the conversation so that I can take a step back and that’s what needs to happen and I also believe strongly in Co curatorial practice and what I mean by that is inviting people from the community in to have a voice to write the labels to work with me or and working with curators on the continent. For example, I hope things change. I think this, you know crossed arm curatorial look that’s like I know everything about this art and I’m the person you should come to I think that needs to be dismantled a little bit and w e need to think more pluralisticly about these voices. I hope hope that sort of answers that it makes sense.
MATT: Sure. I mean, I was teaching in the United Arab Emirates for six years and I was teaching primarily Muslim women about art and it was very interesting sort of having to learn as much as I could about the regional stuff so that it wasn’t just me as a white male American going into the UAE and basically teaching them about the history of American art and the American types of art and styles of art but also trying to be culturally sensitive and also sort of culturally inclusive of the region was it was a sort of experience an eye-opening experience for me because I hadn’t had to do that before cuz I had only taught in America
AMANDA: right? Yeah and in that you were recognizing your positionality, right? So I have to do the same kind of thing. Yeah. I’m a white woman with this kind of education. But yeah, I did come from rural North Carolina. I did have a much more pluralistic experience growing up because it was a military town. So we had people from all over at a very broad group of friends wasn’t just a bunch of other white girls basically, but I think recognizing that positionality is really important and how you’ve gotten there. So the fact that you were a white male, you know teaching Muslim women and I am a white woman talking about African art and working with African Scholars and curators. I think that’s important, but what’s also equally important is that we have Many different voices and that we can recognize a positionality but also include those other ones. So I’m just saying like we couldn’t have just one kind of person always talking about African art. That doesn’t make sense.
MATT: You brought up an interesting point, which is that like the basically the access to the education that allows people to become curators has also sort of a barrier to entry because I mean just the nature of getting a PhD is expensive often times and also takes exponentially more work than a lot of people are willing to put into it. I still don’t get a PhD but I’m a practicing artist. scholar that’s a great word, scholar. I’ll go with that. So I’m not a scholar as you can tell by my vocabulary.
AMANDA: You don’t need a piece of paper to tell you your scholar.
MATT: I can tell you I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me. I’m not a scholar also, come on have you listen to the podcast? I am not a scholar, I swear like a sailor and I’m as angry at the system as much as I am a participant in the system. So…
AMANDA: I’ve got a potty mouth too. It’s cool. I swear like a sailor. sailor.
MATT: I mean, it’s tough. I mean you want more representation, regional representation. So, I mean, it’s not even about just African art. It’s also about South American art Asian art and all the other, you know, under-represented curators of specific regional stuff there. There’s just not a lot of opportunities for them because as I said, like for me it’s about the expense of an education but it’s also sort of maybe not culturally something to the people are like, I want my child to grow up to be a curator.
AMANDA: Yeah. No, that’s what I was saying. I didn’t even know that my job existed until well into my college career so already that shows you if you if you don’t know to go towards that you can’t have those building blocks, and also just yeah the access it’s so expensive. So if you think about especially United States how much money it cost just to go get a four-year degree and then even realize that you need a master’s and also a PhD to become a curator curator. It’s just not available to everyone. So I think we also need to recognize different kinds of knowledge has and different kinds of path towards becoming a scholar like there are other ways of learning about art or learning about objects that don’t necessarily mean a PhD that’s going to open up some really guarded Cannons, if I can put it that way
MATT: you can put it whatever way you would like thats fine . Well, it’s tough. I mean, okay, like then when I think back to it like when I think about it like you chose, okay, your title says African art, Africa is a continent. I mean he’d like that’s a huge topic, you know, like say even saying American art somehow seemed smaller than African. That’s like saying Asian. I mean that’s a massive many cultures, many regions, many dialects, many tribes, many everything like this. I’m sitting here with your your CV open and stuff and I see things like Sierra Leone and Sengelese gold jewelry, so you have some more specific interests than like the whole continent.
AMANDA: Yeah, you have to that’s the other thing is, you know, not only had to go through a fuck ton of work in schools and colleges and universities and getting your degree. You also have to dial in a really specific Focus. That’s what Academia wants you to do is find your tiny little niche that only four other people talk about and then you write your dissertation on that and and I think that also needs to get taken apart a little bit and I have noticed month and more lately that there’s a lot more Global views, transnationalism, multiculturalism kind of thinking about different kinds of art across time and space rather than dialing in on this one culture. For example, like that’s a very constructive notion of what quote unquote African Arts are or American Arts are and that’s the other thing. That’s really at play here is that in museums, especially, American art has come to mean a particular thing that excludes a lot of other kinds of artistic expressions or people of particular colors or genders or what not the same thing happens with African that’s Canon has been constructed from a very particular positionality and that is a of the global North and it doesn’t often include what maybe the global South might construct as the Canon of quote unquote African art and you’re absolutely right, the first week of class, when I’m teaching introduction or actually it’s called survey of African art and I tell them that is a misnomer that’s impossible. There’s absolutely no way we can look at you even begin to scratch the surface of thousands of years of artistic expression on this giant ass continent. So guess what surveys are that other one that we’re going to try to look at a few different things to look up a broad themes and try to understand just some of the the artistic practices that have happened on the continent. So yeah, it so fucking huge? There’s just no way
MATT: I remember in undergrad one of my professors the art history Professor. He specialized in Etruscan mirrors and so he spent like we were doing the overview of Art History but he spent like four weeks on just Etruscan mirrors, and I know far more than any human needs to know about Etruscan mirrors because he made us learn all this stuff, I don’t know why but again, it goes back to that sort of a uber special specification in higher education and Academia that I think while it’s great and I love that his knowledge exists. I don’t feel that he necessarily needed to put it into his classroom. So like that’s a whole different issue. But you brought up a topic that I think was sort of interesting. In America there are, I’m probably going to get some chastised for this but I’m going to say it anyway, there’s the the the formal art World which generally falls under educated artists. So artists of some who have gone to some schooling let’s say and then there’s sort of a separation to The Outsider artists and they are treated very differently and they’re looked at very differently. I don’t know anything about African art. So I’m coming to this as a complete idiot. So please educate me in Africa. Is there sort of a separation of that is there an educated artist or is it more sort of Outsider non trained, I don’t even know what like indigenous art like, what’s what’s the hierarchy of the more admired and respected works.
AMANDA: I think you’re actually hinting at something that is at play in terms of why African quote unquote or African American and Diaspera Arts aren’t as well represented in museum spaces in global North the global North and that is that it’s all thought of his Outsider Art where you’re looking at it from from the global North because you know in in school were taught classical arts or Renaissance arts and modernists and all of that from a very eurocentric perspective. So let’s let’s look at that but also set it aside for a second cuz I think there’s a there’s some problems there. But even within Africa, of course, there are schools. There are trained artists. There are professional artists there. There are ones that have Studio There are ones that move all over the world as well get training in Europe. Come back to Africa. I mean, we we get all the kinds but then there’s also a masquerade artists that are still working very much for a local community but our contemporary practicing Artist as far as I’m concerned, but they don’t get included in the Contemporary galleries for example, and they don’t have that International recognition because they’re not working within that Art Market proper.
MATT: Okay. Wait go back one step. I want to know a little bit more about your knowledge and specifications of like your interest. Do you are you more sort of studying and and and working with historical African art or contemporary African art?
AMANDA: both , you can’t exclude one from the other
MATT: damn it. I was looking for something simple and clean.
AMANDA: sorry, that’s one of the things I harp on constantly in class and my lectures in the work that I do in the gallery is that this binary this pervasive binary of the traditional verse of the Contemporary has been set up but that’s really a northern perspective, you know Euro American perspective. I think that’s you know a masquerade for example, that’s specifically what I’ve studied for a lot of my career and that has been thought of as home Village rural thing of the past this traditional art form, but it may be traditional in some ways because it is pulling from an interpretation of the past but very much hyper contemporary because its always related to whatever is happening at any given moment. It is really responding to politics or social injustices or trying to raise the finances to make something happen for like to educate the youth and the community like it’s always related to the present. So that’s where that pervasive historic or traditional versus contemporary gets problematic and in many other wage, but also I want to note that I think Contemporary Arts become much more relevant, especially to younger audiences. So it’s one of the ways that I get at historic because a lot of these artists are interested in the past they are interested in that experience and they it reinterpret it and really compelling ways. And if you can get that hook then you can open up that whole world of learning about what might be boring initially historic or traditional Arts. I think we have to do more heavy lifting in terms of African Arts because we don’t get a lot of that training in America, especially in Europe. You just don’t learn about it. So you have to do a little bit more explanation. And again, I use Contemporary Art and artists and experiences to try to get at some of the that does that make sense?
MATT: When I think of African art, now keep in mind again stupid and has no knowledge of African art, I’m an idiot. So I’m coming it with with as though I mean like, you know a child. When I think of African Art, I think that there’s a great direct lineage. Like if you saw a piece that’s made today in Africa, you could literally say and they were influenced by this place and these people and these tribes and these previous, you know, civilizations whatever. T here’s a very direct line that you can really clearly see the history and the influences of Contemporary African art through the history. Unlike let’s say European or American like there’s a lot of random things that’s come up, you know movements of this that sort of changed the whole Paradigm of whatever people are looking at kind of thing. But I feel like Africa’s more consistent through the decades and Millennia, am wrong, please tell me…
AMANDA: I mean, I’m not going to say wrong at all, but I think that might be a bit of an outsider perspective because its s till…
MATT: it’s completely an outsider perspective. I have no relations to Africa whatsoever. And I have minimal knowledge of it so that I mean I’m trying to be schooled here. So teach me
AMANDA: there’s a there’s definitely nuances and specificity that are so gradient and so fine-grained like you can’t even begin to understand any given art form unless you’re like there for a long time and study that trajectory. I think it’s really hard to talk about that. But again, it’s just so fucking enormous that it’s it’s hard to talk broad strokes like that.
MATT: Okay. Can you do more than one small favor? I want some definitions. So you use the term diaspora. I hear that word in many different contexts. I hear about ecological stuff. I hear about Arts, so define how you’re using diaspora.
AMANDA: Well originally it was specifically Related to the Jewish movement to do Jewish people and much it’s much much more now actually related to African people of African descent that are dispersed all over the world primarily, of course through the trades of things slave trade and the other movements or forced or other of people diaspora is I’d say much more related to African descent people now, I often pluralize it. So we’re sometimes I’ve seen a capitalized so the aspirin with a capital D or diasporas because they are all over and they’re constantly in flux very fluid people are moving all the time. So now if you apply that to the Arts and think about how fluid arts and ideas are you might begin to think to challenge some of the things that you just said about this kind of being able to see the history of any particular art form in Africa, for example that it’s going to always be relational and changing and moving and being influenced by other outside forces know Africa a lot of especially Coastal African people have been in contact with others for centuries. So you have to include all of that as part of African history, so Africa is not the elsewhere of the West. It has been part of the West and the global world for a long long time. So I think isolating Africa as its own thing is already going to be problematic.
MATT: Okay. The other thing I wanted to know more about masquerade are we talking like masquerade balls or we talking like Halloween or we talking like tribal dance masks and this kind of stuff like give me some context some understanding of what cuz on your CV it says Urban masquerade. So like give me a give me an understanding of what that means.
AMANDA: Yes, so I definitely teach a masquerade as well because yes, I mean depending on who you are your own positionality you have a particular idea of what masquerades i s and sometimes that is, you know, a masquerade ball in Venice for example, and you’ve got those beaky masks and we’re Carnival in the Netherlands. I actually studied that for my Master’s so I was very interested masking in that context and masquerade or Mardi Gras and Carnival exists in many many different places in the world. So masking is pretty much a global phenomenon and what I study particularly in Sierra Leone is a masquerade that that was invented in the City by people of multicultural dissent that we’re all dropped into Freetown, which is the capital of Sierra Leone and had to find a way to get by in a really tough situation without your family without your community to help you. So especially the youth, they had to band together. It’s just kind of rag-tag group of kids that wanted to raise the money to survive. So they start masking because that’s actually a way to get money is to perform people give you money to do that or you have to make the masquerades for the artist give the money for that. So it is very Urban in nature and very specific to that history of Freetown and to that rag-tag group of young kids that were coming from all over and again that overturns that idea that masquerade is just a Village thing that’s related to a particular tribe quote unquote and I don’t use that word in terms of African art in Western scholarship. If I’m in Sierra Leone, they say tribes they say, oh, yeah, that’s a Limba tribe mask or whatever masquerade performance or a Mende , but when we’re talking about it in the global North we have to recognize recognize the history of that word tribe as having some negative connotations, but also being fixed to having this fixed be around that term that can make it seem like something in the past that something negative or on this sort of linear timeline of human history. So I just want to note that like tribe in the North American context which is where you’re coming from and what you are trained in means a thing and you need try to be legally recognized. Okay. So I I definitely talk to my students about that about that term tribe and why we would or wouldn’t use it when we’re talking about African Arts. So I just wanted to note that no.
MATT: I lived in the Middle East and they’re very tribal. There’s well.
AMANDA: Yeah and tribe has actually gotten into sort of Renaissance, right? So find your tribe, you know, it’s it’s been made a hip term these days to right . I don’t know maybe I’m you know, I’m forty-one. So I remember that was something that was happening the last few years. Maybe it’s not anymore and I’m not cool but…
MATT: I have no idea. I’m not cool at all like not even on my radar. So yeah. Sure. I believe you. So now you technically work at the North Carolina Museum of Art you have worked at the Smithsonian, but you’re currently in Hamburg Germany. So tell me how all that sort of shuffles together and how did that come together?
AMANDA: Yeah. All of that is correct. I’m a bit of an overachiever Leslie Knope is my spirit animal. So I am a curator of African art at the North Carolina Museum of Art and I saw this, you know, it was already publishing on this idea of restitutions in reparations, which kind of circled back to some of them were talking about social justice and Equitable representation. And this Reckoning that museums are having right now in this decolonial moment, and I was wondering about that it
MATT: put a pin in that and we will come back to that.
AMANDA: so I was writing about that about Benin Kingdom object specifically which is present day Nigeria. So this is a pretty the most famous case of Looting of art objects on the continent 1897. the British came they took thousands of objects. They they burned the city. They ousted the king like they were total fuck heads and they then sold all that stuff on the market to finance that raid we’ll put a pin in that too. I’m going to tell you a whole history of it, but those are the most visible arts for having this conversation about restitutions and reparations. So I was writing about that because the North Carolina museum of Art have a few just like many American museums to just like a whole bunch of European museums have so I saw this position come up to work on this project called Digital Benin, which is hosted by the MARKK the Museum am Rothenbaum if I can set correctly my German translations awful and so I threw my hat in the ring to be the research coordinator for the project and I didn’t think I would get the job and I did and then I was like, oh fuck now, what do I do? Are we really moving to Germany for two years? And you know my husband who was amazing and artist is able to come with me. You know, he’s that nimble and we we moved over here and I was also lucky to have such a great working relationship with the chief curator at the NCMA and the deputy director and the director. They all supported me in this endeavor and agree that it’s such an important project and such an important and visible way of picking away at that restitutions reparations problem. So sorry if I’m going on too long about this, but all of that kind of background is important for all of us to real life like this is an important project. This is one of the most important things happening in African art. So I kind of dropped a lot of things I was doing and reduced my hours a bit at the end NCMA and I’m juggling two jobs, essentially when I first came I was also still teaching at UNC Chapel Hill, so it was a real Oh, it was an exhausting first few months, but that’s I think that’s the long and the short of how I I got over here and yeah managing a lot of different projects, but that’s kind of how I do.
MATT: Okay because I grew up in Washington DC. So the Smithsonian was my childhood Museum. So I love that place.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah. So sorry forget about that. I curated that good as gold fashioning Senegalese women exhibition for the Smithsonian and before that. I was working on there e-museum project. So I was reaching researching their Collections and kind of pushing out as many of their objects into a digital platform as possible. So some of that experience also feeds into the Digital Benin project which I’m working on here, which is digitally reassembling all those objects that I told you about that were dispersed. Globally. I’ve tracked over four thousand objects at this point in about a hundred museums. I’m sure there’ll be more but that’s where we’re at right now. And it’s it’s a big job to talk to that many museums that many staff work with that many objects and try to get them all into one database but I have an amazing team that I’m working with that I highly respect. The Smithsonian was also a big place. I mean we all grew up hoping to go to the Smithsonian right if you were a museum person at all, and it’s such an amazing asset for our people for our American experience, right?
MATT: Oh, no, I literally grew up in the Smithsonian my mother worked there when I was in intermediate school and stuff. I at the end of Intermediate School my mother would be like, okay take the metro and meet me at the Air and Space Museum and I feel like I literally grew up there. So yeah, I love the Smithsonian
AMANDA: we grew up driving the 5 hours to go to Smithsonian when we could
MATT: it was five miles from where I grew up.
AMANDA: I would live again in DC in a heartbeat. I really loved it there working at the Smithsonian. It was like a dream every day. I was so just like I can’t believe my fucking work here and the staff at the the national museum of African art are family. I still work closely with them. I’m actually working on another exhibition with the Smithsonian right now. It’s tentatively entitled ‘ new masks now’ and we’re working with individual contemporary artists that work on masquerade. So some of those things that I was talking about are very much going to be turned into an exhibition with a publication and and thinking about these objects are individuals that are not recognized in that Contemporary Art Canon, but are very much Making Waves and and making amazing art that is globally related and is moving around. So I’m working with three other Scholars, Hervé Youmbi he is Cameroonian, Jordan Fenton and Lisa Homann and are all the scholars working on the project and I am the lead curator. And again, it’s just another fantastic way that the Smithsonian is sort of supporting this new research that’s happening in this direction that we need to be moving.
MATT: Okay. So that leads to be going back to that pin that we put in on the whole sort of issue of reparations. And restitutions I get so often I’ve heard these conversations for decades about like basically how people should all the museums of the Europe’s and America’s should be returning their stuff to the native lands that they stole these things from.
AMANDA: Yes, and they should okay.
MATT: Well that was sort of the leading question was like and where do you fall on this position?
AMANDA: Yes restitutions reparations. Yes digital B enin is not directly doing that. We are sort of providing the opportunity for those requests to be made by stakeholder communities. We do not as a project take that stance. However, I is a personal individual scholar and Museum practitioner and curator do very much support that circulation and a larger broader notion of circulation of objects. So of course, I’m very focused on African art one’s not that’s not the the only way this is happening. This conversation is happening right now. But what I will say is I have been talking to a lot of people interviewing publishing thinking about these Global circulations and the return of objects and it’s not such a it’s not that simple and it’s not a one-way movement. So I think what has been told to me is also the problem is that we have some of the greatest treasures of Africa outside of Africa in Europe in America, right, but it’s not like any of the African museums have some of the greatest treasures from America to display. So we need not thinking more broadly about the circulation and having a more Global representative of treasures and the greatest Arts everywhere for people to have that experience to have that education but also the most important Treasures should be returned to the African continent so that young people children young artists that stakeholder Community can have access to their own important histories. So like we wouldn’t take the Liberty Bell and send it somewhere else would we we need that in America? We have our own Treasures that we would never let go. So we need to give those back and they are outside of the continent absolutely. But at the same time a lot of these communities want to be represented. They’re very proud of their Heritage and their history and these histories that are so violent like that the Benin Kingdom raid by the British that should not be forgotten that should be talked about so you have these sort of ambassadors that can still live in different museums to talk about that history. But if you’re looking at the hundreds of objects that the British museum has or that other museums have I don’t want to should probably list too many. It’s tipped in the wrong direction, so they had alot more to give back. Basically, they don’t need so many as the ambassador’s is what I’m saying?
MATT: Well, the British museum is sort of the lightning rod with the like the Elgin marbles a bunch of other things that they you know, they’re sort of being pressured to give back, for matter the Louvre, I mean technically then the Louvre should give like the Mona Lisa back to Italy and like, I mean, there’s all kind this is I mean, this is not just a Africa versus Europe and America thing because I mean there’s even things with like the World War Two the the Nazis taking things and out so it should be returned. So this is not a singular singular conversation about Africa. I t’s the question of like, you know should art of a geographical location only be in that geographic location. But again, I grew up with Smithsonian like I absolutely loved and when I went into the Smithsonian even though it’s an American Museum, I can see stuff from Europe and Asia and Africa and South America and Central America, I could see the history of The Craft or the art or whatever from throughout the world. You know, I could go up to the Met and see the Egyptian stuff. And I mean there’s countless examples of how a museum that has a wide breadth of world artifacts enhances the museum. So like should it become a bit more nationalistic as like, you know, the the works of artists from the history of Sierra Leone should only be in Sierra Leone. I mean there should there should be some sharing and of the world experiences around the different museums in the world.
AMANDA: Yeah, that’s absolute to be getting at is that we should be sharing much more meaningfully in a more Equitable way and I think that’s precisely what you’re saying. Like, why would only you get to have that experience growing up in DC where you get to see the Arts all over the world and be inspired. I mean, that’s that’s why I ended up working so long Hard tirelessly for African arts or to talk about them because it blows my mind and and I think it’s really important for us all as developing humans a young people to see the fact that other people think across time and space and other cultural sort of knowledges and how it is very different but that difference is important and and you learn about yourself by seeing those differences if that makes sense. So, why would we only have that experience? Why is that not more equitably accessible on the continent or in South America or where else so I think long and there are museums that’s another misguided thought is that there aren’t museums in Africa. Absolutely. There are there’s a lot of them but I don’t think like like you were saying that we should only have like you really only have Sierra Leonian art in Sierra Leone. I think that we should have all different kinds of Representative Arts all over the world for us to have these great educational experiences. But at the same time we have to talk about this imperial History of museums because that is part and parcel of the way that we present other cultures. So it it is essentializing it is problematic. And so, you know at the same time as I say we should all be able to have this amazing Museum experience growing up and learning. I also recognize that history because you know, the early museums were part of sort of this imperialism this collecting of the world the show that you were “civilized” and that everyone else was somehow below you on this linear human life narrative if that makes sense
MATT: it does, the thing that enters my mind on this is like, okay, so, you know, unfortunately like I know a decent amount about how museums work for better for worse. So the question is like, okay what let’s say, let’s say in a perfect world every Museum in the world said, yes, we will repatriate every object that was somehow stolen or taken from a different culture back to that culture and their their designated museums. What’s the perfect idea of how that will function because to me in my mind. That sounds like it’s going to become the world would become more nationalistic. So like if you want to learn about Sierra Leone you have to go to Sierra Leone if you want to learn about Germany, you would have to go to Germany because everything would be returned. So like basically like I feel like because of the way that I know that museums are very Selfish in many ways like they they don’t want people necessarily to go to other museums. They want people to come to their Museum, you know, that’s because that’s how they fundraise that’s how they get their support. That’s how they get the people through the doors because they want people to come to them. They don’t want to tell people to go somewhere else. So like how could that work?
AMANDA: I think it’s going to be vary because I think one of the things that needs to be looked at and taken apart and is Again part of that decolonization of museums is having a different way of representing and using and storing the objects that are much more relative. So that includes indigenous world views and ways of using art and objects. So ideally these museums would all kind of open up a bit more and not have such calcified borders around the way objects should be used stored thought about displayed Etc. You know, I’m not saying anything specific but I think that they’re all going to look a little bit different if we include other ways of thinking about and speaking about the object. So at the same time though, the museum set is very much in place in Africa museums as well. So you still see some of that Colonial mindset apparent because that museum was created by the global North essentially. So some of those Frameworks aren’t going to go away and maybe they shouldn’t necessarily but we all at least need to understand how that those Frameworks came about. Because I now that we can we can use them. I believe in museums. Obviously, I wouldn’t still be working in one after sixteen years if I didn’t believe in them. But same time it has that violent history it has that imperialism about it. But I think we can use those spaces to have these really powerful conversations about history and about experience.
MATT: I was recently listening to the song Malcolm Gladwell tirate that he did about museums. I did have you heard this podcast know. Oh, you should listen to it. He it’s revisionist history with Malcolm Gladwell. He’s marvelous. I love Malcolm Gladwell, so I’m not knocking him at all. But boy, he went on a tirade about how much he hates museums and how much he hates how majority of their objects are in storage. So they just buy things to own them, but they don’t ever exhibit them. You mean like I grew up at the Smithsonian again. I don’t know why I keep saying that but I grew up with the Smithsonian . I think it’s like what 96% of what the Smithsonian owns is, not only not on display but has never been on display and will never be on display because they own so much that they just put into storage that they never put out. Why do they keep getting more? Why why do they need to have that ownership over these things? Why can’t they share that or you know, put it out on exhibition loan to other museums things like this because like why did museums feel this need to own everything to me? This feels like this colonization conversation AMADNA: Yeah
MATT: because like they said they said they were they want to be the The Arbiter of the sort of the the the it’s not just tastes though that it’s it’s the scholarliness of it too cuz they want to be able to say like, oh you want to research this particular time. Well we have the biggest collection in the world of that? And so therefore everybody has to go to them to research that like, it’s this desire to be the the keeper of knowledge keeper of objects keeper of scholarly research. That is questionable.
AMANDA: Yeah, and jealously guarded
MATT: Why is that?
AMANDA: Well, I mean if it again indicates that assertion of being at the top of the Pyramid of being the best of being number one and it comes from that Colonial history from that need, I mean, if you go back there was that need to get public buy-in for the colonial project so it was part of that you collect the world you are the most civilized because you were the one that articulates what it means and how it is should be displayed and and you are also the Conqueror in some ways because not able to take all that and put it in one place. And that is it stems also from those cabinets of curiosity that it was the exclusive property of the wealthy to be able to show off that you had been to all these places that you had collected these other people essentially.
MATT: Well historically I am not saying I agree with that but I understand that
AMANDA: right so Why i s it still like that now,
MATT: correct, yes
AMANDA: so I mean but that’s why because that’s still there. That’s not an easy upbringing to kind of turn away from but that’s why decolonization and and sort of self-reflexivity and the Museum’s is so imperative right now why it’s happening but it’s not, you know museums. They they do not pivot quickly. They they’re glacial they’re like the Titanic, you know, like they can’t turn very quickly. So it takes some time and that’s part of the problem museums too is that they need to be a bit more Nimble and able to to turn more quickly. So anyway, all of that I think is finally shifting as you noted earlier restitutions return of these objects that have for so long been jealously guarded and and these guild halls of knowledge that has articulated only from this Global North perspective. I think they are going to be moving other places and I think long-term loans is part of that too. And again, that’s more global. circulations of things. I think it’s shifting. And like I said said you pointed out that this conversation has been happening for a long time people have been making requests for these objects to be given back for decades and decades this is a problem. And so even if there’s legal issues the objects are supposedly owned by the public not necessarily by the museum depending on the institution. So it makes it that sounds beautiful and sounds lovely at we all own those things, but it makes it much harder to give things back frankly. So there are issues with that too. It’ll take some time. But I think it’s finally starting to happen.
MATT: but beyond that part of it that I see as you know, as an outsider of it all is as I see also, like let’s take the Louvre as an example with the the Mona Lisa right? If the Mona Lisa was not at the Louvre there would be exponential drop in attendance to the Louvre because that’s a primary draw of why people enter there. So from a financial standpoint and a marketing standpoint because I mean, I can only imagine how much money the Louvre makes off of the tee shirts and The Umbrellas and the everything with the Mona Lisa’s image on it . So it would be a huge financial loss for many of these institutions. I mean same thing Elgin Marbles and in the British museum all these places that these objects that were, for lack of a better word, taken from some other place have now become sort of symbols of that place and they would lose that marketing position as well. So, thats a Difficult thing to deal with
AMANDA: but if we’ve had such important works of art like National Treasures that are owned by these museums North in the global that we held for a long time. We’ve been the caretakers or whatnot. Maybe they’ll go back. Hopefully they will soon at least some of them wouldn’t it be an amazing point in statement to have something like the Mona Lisa one of our National Treasures or France’s national Treasures go on a global tour let the world see it because not everyone can come to France. I just think that would be it will never happen, but they could be
MATT: No.
AMANDA: an amazing poignant statement about this ownership.
MATT: Could you imagine being the people who write the insurance for the Mona Lisa to travel the world like the the the sheer price of that insurance would be astronomical
AMANDA: astronomical and all the careers that would have to go with it and and the security job. All on both sides like
MATT: and all the careers that would be destroyed when it’s stolen or damaged in transport or whatever’s going to go wrong with that whole scenario
AMANDA: but it’s an important factor mental exercise. I think is more what I’m getting at
MATT: but it would be very interesting because it would open up an entire new industry of like secured art transport. Like a Brinks or Wells Fargo that like takes money around to Banks and stuff like that. That would be disliked Armored Cars of art with like armed guards securing and transporting. It could be a really interesting industry…
AMANDA: absolutely but I think us talking about how important this piece is, oh my God it would never happen. I can you imagine all the the money the troubled security La, la, la, so how can say an object that is necessary for a king to be in Throned, you know in any given context and I can be specific here on the African continent because these kinds of objects exist and were taken. So if you are robbed of the way of installing the next king and transferring the knowledge from the previous kingdoms and all the ancestors to this current King if if that is stolen and living in a museum in the global North. Can you not relate that to a fucking powerful treasure like the Mona Lisa and then go. Oh fuck we should give that back. Do you think that it would feel much more pressing if we could think about in terms of that?
MATT: Oh, you do know I’m just being Devil’s Advocate.
AMANDA: Yes
MATT: okay good I just want to Make sure that you don’t think I like differ in opinion from you
AMANDA: no and I’m asking you do you do you see how long like I think it would be a really important exercise for us to try to recognize there are parallel fucking Treasures that we don’t think of in that way like, oh, well, you know, it’s a tribal thing from the past
MATT: Well, that’s like imagine like Germany coming into America stealing the Declaration of Independence then putting it on on exhibition in Germany. America would be furious at Germany for that, let’s not say Germany, Russia, because Americans hate Russians, so we’ll say Russian stole it and put it on display at the but the the Hermitage right? I’m trying to throw a sound intellectual throw out names. Is it working?
AMANDA: Yes. Yes, very impressive.
MATT: I love the Hermitage mostly because I love the fact that they have cats. They have The cats that keep the place clean but anyways, so, yeah, I mean the the whole idea of repatriating I I feel like there needs to be like, okay, this is off the thing I think of don’t get me wrong. I’m not against it but I’m technically like I have no real position on it. I think it’s a really interesting. I think it’s an interesting debate to have and I’m don’t know where I fall on it. But the reason why I don’t know where I fall on it yet is because there’s no sort of criteria that sort of quantify. That’s what makes something necessary to be repatriated. You know, like I mean like you gave the example of a let’s say a crown in a tribe that pass on the back the the ruler of the Kingdom to me. Yeah, that should be repatriated like that. If it’s something about the the the workings of the the government or the tribe or whatever it is then absolutely that needs to be returned. But like there’s a lot of trinkets, you know, like things that were let’s say buried with Egyptian mummies. Okay. It has no bearing on on modern society. It’s not going to affect their ability to run their government and all this like does all the Egyptian mummy stuff needs to be returned. So like where’s the point of like this is needed back in the country versus t hey just want it.
AMANDA: Well, I think that’s where someone like me comes in where different Scholars advocating for these artistic Expressions globally can come together and help make that more crystallized what things should go back what are important? You know, because I think where it also gets a little bit tricky is too then toss that softball back to say, you know Africans, you know different communities different stakeholder communities and different countries to say. Okay. Well, what do you want back? So then you’re sort of shifting that over to them to make it their problem. So I think because we have this Museum Paradigm that’s been in place for so long at us white Scholars have been working on it and sort of benefiting, you know, I have a job. I get paid to talk about African art, which is amazing. But I need to also then be an advocate be you spend my time and my energy helping to work with those communities to say he’s dead. The objects that are super important that we probably should return and that’s I think where I see my future as a scholar and Museum practitioner is like yeah, I want to I want to have these a greater conversations. I want to bring in disability and representation and and talk about those things. But I also want to be the person working with stakeholder communities on the continent to say yeah. These are the things that they say are most most important and should go back. So do you see what I’m saying is I I don’t think that we should only rely on different stakeholder communities to tell us what they want back that’s part of it, but we have to do the hard work in the heavy lifting too. We can’t be lazy and just wait for them to come to us because we set up the system. So we understand it
MATT: right but It’s like the Nazi return stuff like they they set up a a series of sort of rules and regulations saying like if this happened and or this thing is this important and or you can prove this or that then it’ll be returned. But if you don’t have all that stuff, then it can’t be won’t be returned or you won’t get reparations or whatever. Like I feel like everybody’s just sort of crying out going I want my stuff back but they’re not saying like what stuff or why or I feel like if if there was some sort of rules or guidelines that were consistent throughout the Globe. This is not specifically about Africa that that the whole conversation might go a little bit smoother.
AMANDA: Yes
MATT: I you know, like I feel like it’s it’s just too easy brought a stroke saying I want my stuff back.
AMANDA: Yes
MATT: what stuff. But why why do you need it back? Why would it not be more beneficial to be in the Met in order to for some young child to see this piece of whatever Greco-Roman thing that they then are inspired to go to Greece because they saw their you know, like there’s a certain amount of Elements that I feel like they don’t necessarily need to be returned. But absolutely there are some that should be returned. And so it’s trying to create that like what is not necessary to return versus what could possibly stay in other regions in order to Garner interest in those histories and those regions for people that live in those different places
AMANDA: Yeah Yeah that makes absolute sense and who’s articulating that so I think that’s an important question too. So I I’m saying it needs we all need to be coming to the table. We can’t shift hundred percent of that duty to stakeholder communities and different places that have had things taken, you know under duress will say so it may have been directly looted or stolen or it may have been taken during the colonial era when there’s a power dynamic in place that made it, you know, unequal and unethical. So, so anyway, I I think there are Consortiums and different groups that could all come to the table, so you would you would like some kind of representative from the institution from the secular communities from The American or Euro American institutions. That would all come together and go here’s with a list. Here’s the collection . Here’s what we think and here’s why it’s spreading that work around more evenly and also everyone can come to the table with a different reasons that things might need to stay or might need to go or might take me to be long term loans or going different places in the world or staying put or whatever and and there’s so many different factors to take into consideration there, also the stability of the the object can it go to those places or should it just be shifted back to the stakeholder community and left there for good because otherwise it’s going to fall apart. I mean, you never know. It really depends but the first step of the institutions that holds most of these objects again, the global North need to be transparent about what they’ve got and publish lists. That’s what most people are calling for as the first big step is transparency and Publishing the provenance so the historiography of the objects when they were taken when they circulated how they were sold who they went through blah blah blah a lot of times. We don’t know that for African art. There’s a whole lot of thing. They’re like, we won’t go into it. But so if you’re publishing your list then people in other places in the world can see what is in institutions because like you were saying the Smithsonian has 96% of their collection in storage, but they are also and that was the part of that a museum project that I did trying to put more and more and more of it online. So people can get access to it. Then there’s also the problem of whether or not you have access to Internet but that’s a whole whole other issue as well.
MATT: And that’s something that I think about too is like couldn’t some of these museums just sort of lie like they could just go, Oh, no, we didn’t steal that that was there was there was just here like when we opened it was just miraculously here don’t know where it came from like couldn’t they just to a certain extent just lie because in the Museum Industry the provenance and paperwork and all this kind of stuff is incredibly important and I mean to a certain extent like these things like these things were talking about right now the way there’s no paperwork on them. You know, somebody somebody went into some foreign country. They stole it they brought it back and then they basically fenced it through some illicit person and then then somebody owned it and then that person found it gifted it to a museum there now, it’s suddenly in museum but there’s no paperwork on that. There’s no way to you know, take it all the way back. So that’s a a very difficult nature of the whole provenance and paper trail of of all this looted and stolen stuff.
AMANDA: Well, there are certain time periods in certain kinds of objects that even if you don’t have a paper trail, you have reasonable enough certainty that it should go back. So for as a recent recent example Shrine figures from the Igbo area of Nigeria that were taken during the Biafran War you might not have any paperwork of that. But if it dates that time period. It was not taken with permission. So Chika Okeke-Agulu was one of my favorites Scholars who very loudly and aggressively attacked. I think it was Christie’s I was going to sell the shrine objects and said, you know, you really need to pull these off of that sale do that provenance research because you would not have Shrine figures like this that were taken ethically because they came out during the Biafran war. So that’s already problems. Even if you don’t have the paperwork though, he and a lot of us other Scholars Advocate that that’s the kind of thing. That should just go back wholesale. W e don’t need something like that that has so much spiritual importance and needs to be in that community and not ethically so anyway, but the the other thing I wanted to say in response to you is museum practitioners are not about that life the the lying the like holding it in tightly. I think we’re working against a larger institutional infrastructure. That is difficult t o change and it takes time to change but we’re also a bunch of humans that care. I mean, maybe I’m a little bit biased because I’m a museum person
MATT: oh no, you are a lot biased but its fine
AMANDA: I feel like a lot of us really do care and we want to do the right thing and we’re working hard for that. And so I think there’s a lot of good people working in a system that is problematic and has needs to change and it has reached that point where people question its very existence and we need to think about that to maybe museums need to be dismantled in the way that we know them. Maybe they need to be something entirely different. But how do we get there? So I will say that I think a lot of us do care and do want to do the right thing.
MATT: I’m sorry. If I offended I didn’t mean it at the curators were Liars or anything like that. I just meant like I could imagine a number of museums just sort of Like you were saying about transparency just maybe it’s not like an actively lying but sort of more of a a lie of omission or a passively just imply not offering enough information to be able to go. Oh nothing that’s ours, you know big like like they just omit things. I mean, I could see it happening. I’m not saying I have seen it happen.
AMANDA: No, it’s it’s a fear and it’s one again. I’ve been talking to a lot of different museums a lot, especially with this project and and so I know very much that history and and the different individuals that you have that are pushing against that system and there is a jealous guarding of it or just yeah, we won’t publish that provenance because then somebody might come and ask for it back there is a bit of that fear, but I think that has been discipated at least somewhat. I think it’s starting to come apart, but I can’t speak of some of those really big institutions that some have some of those amazing Treasures . You’re just like hm. What what’s happening internally there? When are they going to publish those lists in a more transparent way, but they also have so fucking much in their store rooms that is enormous amount of time and money and staff that need to come together to get that done. And that’s where I think it gets a little bit Insidious because like if the museum is not going to put in the time the money raised the money to do that then that’s do you see that’s that’s a way of keeping those close at hand instead of opening it up and being open to that possible
MATT: just saying we don’t have the budget to yeah, that’s work. Like yeah. It’s an easy scapegoat thing.
AMANDA: Yeah, because you need to put things out on display to get the people in the doors to talk to like survive and especially now with covid-19 museums are especially at a critical juncture. I mean a lot of us are folding and and might fold and it’s because they can’t have that foot traffic or can’t raise that money . So now if you simply struggling to stay open, are you going to have the time or the money or the effort to document the collections that are not transparently available to people Globaly?
MATT: There’s also the issue that sometimes things are sort of misrepresented like it says like this is from some place in you know, southeast Asia, but in reality it was from northern Russia or whatever like some some things are just simply miss categorized as well and sort of, you know, given the wrong provenance.
AMANDA: Yeah, I’m seeing that with the Digital Benin in project. I’m kind of having a look at thousands of objects around the world and yeah, actually that’s not you do that’s your buff for example these objects. So then we can help the Museum’s though make those determinations. But I mean that’s just a little drop in the bucket of the thousands and thousands and thousands of objects that these museums have that are miscategorized or misrepresented. Or just not at all digitally represented. So how would you know to even look for things?
MATT: Well, yeah, cuz they’re misfiled miscategorized. I mean, you know, look at what Raiders of the Lost Ark I mean they lost the arc. Come on, So, okay. You’ve used a term that I’d let you go with but I need you to Define for me which is which I’ve never heard before which is global North.
AMANDA: Yeah. I feel like this is a sexy new way to talk about your American normativity and positionality because it also it shows how centered we in the Global North, I say we because you and I are from North America have been so if you look at the map who’s on top who’s the North like why who decided that the map would show Europe and North America at the top in South America and and Africa and all that on the bottom. So if you look at some of the earliest mass Of Africa of contact it was actually flipped. It’s the other way around and if you’ve ever looked at that map, which I urge you to try to do that we feel how weird it feels to go Oh wait Africa’s upside down like no that’s just your positionality. So I think using terms like Global North and Global South kind of points to that positionality and points to that normativity that has been created by centering Euro American Experience of the global north. Does that make sense
MATT: it does, And basically, I’m just asking you to Define it for the listeners, but I mean, you know through the context of what you stated. It was kind of obvious what you meant, but I just wanted to make sure that it was perfectly clear that you’re basically saying it’s sort of a new buzzword that equates to your European American dominance or whatever. kinda thing
AMANDA: Yep. You got it. You did it in a nutshell dead. Better than me.
MATT: Well, it’s just a buzzword. buzzword. it’ll pass some other new word will come up to describe it in time
AMANDA: oh yeah, scholars and Museum practitioner. All of us are subject to Trends right in every way. I think about that with African Arts to and talk to my students like, you know how fashion changes, you know how different things different words come into a popularity and then you know, they Shrink away and new ones come up. So it happens in every way. So right now global North and Global South are the sexy terms, but you’re right. They will probably change
MATT: For Better or For Worse. I mean, it’s a pretty clear to me what that means. But of course I am from the global North. So therefore I perfectly understand it but I would imagine some people might not grasp exactly what Global north means that’s all. All right, last two questions I have for you one is the first one might take a minute. You’re welcome to think about this for a second. Okay. What I’m doing is I’m asking any all the guests to try to give me three artists that are contemporary practitioners that we should be looking at.
AMANDA: Okay
MATT: that’s it. So like somebody I mean I phrase it as like basically some people who are not getting the Interest or acclaim that they should be let’s say but you you think there are some quality that the people should be giving them a better look.
AMANDA: One of my favorite parts of my job is getting to seek out these artists that have not been admitted into those Mega exhibitions of the Art Market of that art world that I think are really bad ass and doing super cool things and I will preface my choices by saying that some of my favorite artists are younger ones and I think they are they’re going to inherit the earth. Obviously the largest population of young people in the world is on the continent. So we should be paying attention to young African people cuz they are inheriting the earth and the youngest coolest most badass artists. I’ve seen are working in photography and fashion and design. Those are the people I think are dead people cool things and in a masquerade, of course, I’m really obsessed with contemporary masquerade. So I will say that Hervé Youmbi I think is pretty well recognized already, but he’s someone who I think is making a lot of the points I talked about today. in His practice and also working with so-called traditional masquerade artists and Cameroon’s and and yet also challenging the museum Paradigm. So Hervé is amazing. Sheku Fofanah is the artists. I’m working with in Sierra Leone who is just a superb designer and if you think about masquerade as being designed, I think that puts you in a different frame as well. He creates different kinds of masquerades for different societies. He also makes them to order for different countries in Africa, but also elsewhere in the world. So he is like he’s somebody that is sought after for his masquerade creation and yet he’s not ever talked about it and Contemporary Art Market masquerade doesn’t get talked about and Contemporary Art Market unless it’s Nick Cave or something which he’s amazing, but he’s also looking to that history of masquerade. Okay. So those are a couple, Alun Be is someone who I have worked with closely and I adore and the way that he’s thinking about World and articulating it have this really positive spin that I think is important and it inspires me and makes me think like there’s there’s hope for all of us and Selly Raby Kane another one that I I Adore she’s a fashion designer artist. She’s making film now and I think a lot of these younger artists are also resisting that sort of narrow frame that we are setting them in like, you know, stay in your lane. If you’re a photographer your photographer. If you’re a fashion fashion designer you’re a fashion designer most of these young artists are like nah, we’re doing all different kinds of things like they’ve see the tool bag that’s available to them. So they are pulling in all these different kinds of expression all these different mediums to to create something really amazing and then my two favorite designers on the Continent, I know in doing more than three
MATT: it’s fine.
AMANDA: Ousmane Mbaye and then oh God, he’s from the Ivory Coast. I forgot his name. I’ll have to get back to you. I’m so sorry, but there there’s some really Amazing Design coming out of the continent that we should be paying attention to so those are those are my picks for now and then one final one I’ll throw in there that I adore working with is Tsoku Maela from South Africa who is making film especially really powerful ways. So he is Young and up-and-coming and I think he’s going to go somewhere Jean Servais. And yeah, he speaks only French, but he’s such. Oh God, these are such amazing people there so inspiring and they’re so dedicated to what they do and they’re, I don’t know. I think one of those things that’s Selly has said to me Selly Raby Kane is that they’re not looking for a seat at the table. So this could be of the art world of the fashion design World, whatever they have created their own table . So I think that’s what also really gets me going with these different artists is like they don’t give a fuck what we’re doing necessarily. They’re just doing what they do and doing it amazingly and I that’s why I say we should be paying attention to that. So Ousmane Mbaye and Jean Servais are my two favorite designers right now working on the continent and I can send you the all those names and links their Pages
MATT: marvelous, I will put it in the show notes.
AMANDA: Yeah. Yeah. I mean I could go on and on like so excited about all the work that’s being created by these different artists and yet they’re still so many that I don’t know about and that’s the fun
MATT: it’s a whole continent. That’s like that’s like me saying like, oh, I know every artist in Canada the United States and Central America, Let me come on. There’s no way that any one person could know all of those people.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MATT: even with Excel but even with a a database or anything like you just can’t know them all.
AMANDA: Yeah, right.
MATT: Last question is advise any advice for, in your case it could be for young curators or people interested in the Art of the African continent like anything about that. You can give to try and help the Next Generation.
AMANDA: I think taking risks is something that I always advocate for and that may be as easier said than done. But my family didn’t want me to go into anthropology or art for that matter and yet I felt so strongly about it and felt inspired by it that I was like, well I don’t care if the jobs aren’t going to come or if I’m never going to make much money which by the way, we don’t make that much money as curators FYI. I’d say just take that risk just go for it. If it inspires you that passion is going to feed into what you do and that will make you feel fulfilled more than necessarily a higher paycheck. And if you’re really putting your energy and your passion into something, I like to Hope and maybe I’m just too you know naive but it has happened for me, you know. It comes that the success will follow if you follow your heart and you follow the things that really inspire you and you think are going to make a difference. So take risks is one of my biggest one, take the leap do it no matter what other people say
MATT: and I also have the thing that like understand that if you’re going into the Arts, it’s a life long type of a Endeavor. It’s not you’re not going to be the amount of people who are like art stars at a very young age is extremely rare. So like it’s a long con basically like so like to not think it’s going to be a fast growth and and all that it’s going to take time. It’s going to take decades to get to some level of expertise in whatever it is you choose in the Arts
AMANDA: exactly. I think I had another one which is listen. I think you know as much as I say don’t listen those people and take the risk. I also went you know, when you’re actually in that moment where you’re doing is interviews or working with different communities or thinking about the Arts. You have to listen to the other viewpoints to what people want. So out of their Museum experience or out of restitutions. So I think listening carefully and closely and opening yourself up to different points of view and different meaningful ways of finding I don’t know like residences with one another finding common ground I think is really really important. You can’t find Common Ground if you don’t open your ears and listen, so sometimes you have to sit down and shut up and I have to remember to do that myself too is like, you know, if everyone says you’re drunk, you should probably sit down so sit for a minute, minute
MATT: I never listen to them any time. Somebody says you’re drunk. I need another drink.
AMANDA: So those are those are mine and I do remember that you asked Shawn Richards, my husband, about that. So I knew that that was coming, But I actually forgot to think about it. But so those are I pull those out of my ass , but I hope they work.
MATT: Yes. I mean it’s advice like it’s something that people including myself should be trying to listen too . It’s hard the point of like, you know, do your own thing and don’t listen to other people but be able to listen to other people. I mean, they’re still the point of, It’s one of those stupid things, you need to know how the system is working in order to learn how to work outside the system.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah
MATT: if you don’t want to follow you, but you can’t just say I don’t want to follow your system you have to you do have to understand what they’re doing in order to understand how best to not be part of it. So like it’s a it’s it’s like my parents just seem like it’s easier to turn a boat. If you’re on the boat instead of being outside the boat wanting to turn the boat. So like you do to a certain extent there’s a little bit of like knowing and working a little bit in the system in order to be more active in the the change of it.
AMANDA: Yeah. No, I completely agree with that. It’s like you have to see the Matrix in order to change it or make any difference.
MATT: yeah. Yeah, I love love another great movie reference too
AMANDA: I mean it’s a it’s a more fun way of saying seeing your positionality seeing the way the world is constructed in around and for you, you know, you have to recognize that before you can go in and try to change or subverted. subverted.
MATT: Well, it’s as a teacher. I always tell the students like you have to learn how to do it right in order to understand how and why to do it wrong
AMANDA: I like that. I might borrow that
MATT: sure. Yeah. I mean, you know like the old the other say what’s the learn the box so that you can think figure out how to work outside the box
AMANDA: Yeah, see the Matrix so you can take it apart apart
MATT: pretty much.
AMANDA: Yeah similar. Yeah. Oh, I love it.
MATT: Thank you very much for your time.
AMANDA: You’re welcome. Thank you.
The Wise Fool is supported in part by an EEA grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway in an effort to work together for a green, competitive, and inclusive Europe. We would also like to thank our partners Hunt Kastner in Prague, Czech Republic and Kunstsentrene i Norge in Norway links to EEA grants and our partner organizations are available in the show notes.