African Art Museum Again Delays Opening of Site on Fifth Avenue

Citing construction delays, the Museum for African Art said on Friday that it had pushed back the planned opening of its new Manhattan home by about six months, from April 2011 to September or October of that year.

The museum will occupy the lower floors of a 19-story condominium building, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, on Fifth Avenue between 109th and 110th Streets. The museum’s president, Elsie McCabe Thompson, said that the building’s developers, Brickman and Sidney Fetner Associates, had failed to complete the core and shell as expected several months ago, and that they were now planning to do so in the next few weeks.

In the meantime the museum’s construction consultants, engineers and architects decided that they could not finish the interior in time for a spring opening.

“It’s a complex situation — I don’t want to lay blame on any one entity,” Mrs. Thompson said. “There’s a lot of factors,” she continued, adding, “It’s quite common.”

Roderick O’Connor, a principal of Brickman, however, said in a phone interview that there had not been any significant delays on its part.

Mrs. Thompson said fund-raising was not a factor in the delay. As of June, the museum had raised only $71 million of the $95 million it needed to pay for construction. Mrs. Thompson said she had since raised an additional $4.5 million. Asked if the museum was considering a phased opening, she said, “I promised a full building, and I’m going to move earth to make it happen.”

Mrs. Thompson, the wife of the former mayoral candidate William C. Thompson Jr., has been pursuing a permanent home for the museum since she took it over in 1997. She first envisioned building on the site a decade ago. The plans were delayed for several years by the withdrawal of the museum’s original development partner, Edison Schools.

Since the museum partnered with Brickman and Sidney Fetner Associates, the opening has been postponed further. When the museum unveiled Mr. Stern’s designs in 2007, it said it would open its new home in late 2009. The date was later pushed back, partly because of the discovery of a quicksandlike layer of sediment under the site.

Mrs. Thompson said she still hoped to open with the planned slate of exhibitions, including a retrospective of the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui and a show of African- and African-American-made baskets.

The museum, which was founded in 1984, has been credited with presenting groundbreaking exhibitions, but it has sometimes struggled financially. Mrs. Thompson and members of the board have said they expect that moving to such a prominent location, on the upper end of Museum Mile, will help attract a large audience, as well as donors and corporate sponsors.

The long journey toward a permanent home, however, has come at some cost to the museum’s visibility. It closed its gallery in Long Island City, Queens, in 2005, though it has created traveling exhibitions and mounted some shows in other spaces since then.

Source: The New York Times

By: Kate Taylor

"The Global Africa Project" at the Museum of Arts and Design this fall

An unprecedented exhibition exploring the broad spectrum of contemporary African art, design, and craft worldwide, The Global Africa Project premieres at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) this November. Featuring the work of over 60 artists in Africa, Europe, Asia, the United States, and the Caribbean, The Global Africa Project surveys the rich pool of new talent emerging from the African continent and its influence on artists around the world. Through ceramics, basketry, textiles, jewelry, furniture, and fashion, as well as selective examples of architecture, photography, painting, and sculpture, the exhibition actively challenges conventional notions of a singular African aesthetic or identity, and reflects the integration of African art and design without making the usual distinctions between "professional" and "artisan."

On view from November 17, 2010, through May 15, 2011, The Global Africa Project is co-curated by Lowery Stokes Sims, the Museum's Charles Bronfman International Curator, and Leslie King-Hammond, Founding Director of the Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Visitors and scholars can track the development of the project and participate in an online discussion of key issues related to exhibition through an interactive and behind-the-scenes blog on MAD's website.

"The Global Africa Project charts important new territory in the field by actively looking beyond restrictions of traditional art historical groupings, including medium, geography, and artistic genre," states Holly Hotchner, the Museum's Nanette L. Laitman Director. "By many measures, this exhibition is entirely unprecedented and it is a landmark moment in our history. As a museum that has long challenged the hierarchies separating art, craft, and design, we are delighted to introduce these new explorations of contemporary African art and aesthetics."

The exhibition will showcase a diverse group of creators, including artists who are experimenting with the fusion of contemporary practices and traditional materials, and design collectives that are using their creative output as engines of local economic change. Featured artists and designers range from well-known figures such as Yinka Shonibare, Kehinde Wiley, and Fred Wilson; to fashion designer Duro Olowu, who is an important presence in the London fashion scene, and Paris-based Togolese/Brazilian designer Kossi Aguessy, who has collaborated with Renault, Yves Saint Laurent, Cartier, and Swarovski; to the Gahaya Links Weaving Association, a collaborative of Hutu and Tutsi women working in traditional basketry techniques in Rwanda. The Global Africa Project will be accompanied at MAD by a special installation, Are You a Hybrid?, curated by designer Stephen Burks. Exploring the impact and influence of Africa on contemporary design, it will be on view from February through April 2011. The installation is part of the MADProjects exhibition series, which explores emerging trends and innovations in the design world.

“Given the nomadic, even migratory, nature of artistic careers today, the interesting challenges of presenting an exhibition like The Global Africa Project are indicated in its very title,” stated curator Lowery Stokes Sims. “The exhibition addresses important questions of how these designers, craftsmen, and artists grapple with issues of commodification in art production, and the meaning and value of art in contemporary society.” 

“No longer are these artists viewed as part of the periphery of the main stream art world," Leslie King-Hammond added. “This work redefines a new center of creativity and innovation for the twenty first century.” 

In order to present the various dimensions of the work of African artists and artisans worldwide, The Global Africa Project will be organized around several thematic ideas: the phenomenon of cultural fusion; promoting competition on the creative global scene; fostering the use of local materials; supporting artisans and craftsman; and impacting the economic and social condition of local communities. In addition to providing a broad framework for the exhibition’s organization, these themes will encourage The Global Africa Project’s audiences to discern how global African artists grapple with the commodification of art production and the meaning and value of art in society—an increasingly significant issue for nations in a rapidly changing global context.

Source: Museum of Arts and Design website

Image: "Sweet Grass Basket" by Mary A. Jackson (1999)

Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art

Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art presents the remarkable beauty of coiled basketry and demonstrates how the utilitarian rice fanner and market basket can be viewed simultaneously as objects of use, containers of memory, and works of art. Grass Roots features approximately 225 objects including baskets from the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia and from diverse regions of Africa, as well as African sculpture from the rice-growing societies which, through the agency of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, exported their cultures to America.

In this exhibition, running from June 23, 2010 - November 28, 2010 at the Museum for African Art, the humble but beautifully crafted coiled basket becomes a prism through which audiences will learn about the creativity and artistry characteristic of Africans in America from the 17th century to the present. Grass Roots traces the parallel histories of coiled baskets in Africa and America starting from the domestication of rice in Africa two millennia ago, through the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Carolina rice plantation, to the present. Early examples of basketry from both Africa and the Americas show the striking similarity between the coiled baskets used to winnow and transport rice on both sides of the Atlantic. By following the trajectories of African and African-American baskets and their makers, the exhibition illuminates the origins and evolution of an ancient art in the global economy and interprets under-explored areas of American and African history. Paintings from the early 20th century, archival and contemporary photographs, and interpretive texts, show visitors how the coiled basket is a repository of history as well as an aesthetic object of beauty.



On both continents, as the original agrarian context for baskets disappeared, changing definitions of art and craft created new audiences for baskets; what was once a utilitarian object became a valued commodity and, in some cases, a magnificent work of art. In Georgia and South Carolina, as in south and western Africa, virtuoso basket makers now prize form over function; craftsmanship, sensitivity to materials, ingenuity of design, and seriousness of artistic intention have become important arbiters of value. Once fabricated to winnow rice and hold food, tools, and valuables, the coiled basket is admired today for containing and shaping space itself. There will be five short films that feature basket makers demonstrating their techniques and telling their stories. "The local community of basket makers, many of whom have made baskets that are in the exhibition, is proud to be involved with this project," said Thomasena Stokes-Marshall, Project director for the annual Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival held in Mount Pleasant, home of the original sweetgrass basket makers.



Grass Roots, organized by the Museum for African Art in New York in collaboration with the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston and the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, is curated by Enid Schildkrout and Dale Rosengarten with input from an advisory board of eminent social historians, art historians, anthropologists, and contemporary basket makers. A 272-page catalogue will accompany the exhibition, as well as a 30-minute film.