ART 382 - Belle Ribicoff Seminar

Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)

Topic for 2016/17b: Modern Days, Ancient Nights: African Art, Music, Cinema, and Fashion. This seminar explores what it takes to realize a major exhibition of African art-a traveling, international loan show-within the context of a major American museum. Carol Thompson, Curator of African Art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and co-curator of the upcoming exhibit “Modern Days, Ancient Nights: African Art, Music, Cinema, and Fashion” guides this seminar on this exhibition in the making. “Modern Days, Ancient Nights” juxtaposes masterpieces of African art with music, cinema, and fashion to foreground reciprocal conduits of myriad multisensory, multilayered exchanges. By highlighting the work of African artists-including musicians, photographers, film directors, and designers-the exhibition also foregrounds Africa’s role in shaping its own self-image. This exhibition features haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear alongside African art to explore the impact of African aesthetics on Western fashion and to show how Africa has “fueled the fashionable imagination for centuries.” Likewise, filmic representations of Africa are incorporated throughout to reveal how visions of Africa are framed by narratives that draw upon popular culture, “to recognize the importance of cinema as a medium through which to understand the richness” of African history. Through this dynamic prism, students become familiar with the fundamentals of African art, though no prior knowledge of the field is necessary.

Some classes meet in New York City, with behind the scenes visits to the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and galleries such as Jack Shainman, the Walther Collection, Axis, Salon 94, and Tambaran. This seminar offers students a firsthand experience of what is involved in realizing a major art exhibition.

Six meetings to be held on consecutive Friday afternoons, 1:00-3:00 pm, after spring break. Some classes will meet at Vassar; most will take place in New York City. Transportation will be provided.

Second six-week course.

One 2-hour period.