This year, KAM’s Global African Community Forum is being co-organized with the Center for African Studies and the African Students Organization to explore the themes of Reckoning, Restitution and Repair.
The goal of this multi-day participatory program is to center African perspectives in critical conversations about the fraught colonial histories of museums and the global politics of collecting, restitution, and return. We hope this initiative will spark new thinking about the place of art in (re)building communities at home and abroad, about the life histories of objects, and about the ethics of museum practice as we reckon with the dislocation, interpretation, and collective care of African objects.
Thursday, October 12, 5:30-7:30PM KAM 62 and hybrid via Zoom
“If Objects Could Speak”: A Screening and Panel Discussion on African Art, Museum Reckoning, and the Politics of Restitution
The keynote for the KAM-CAS Global African Community Forum offers a screening of the short film, If Objects Could Speak, co-directed by Kenyan filmmaker Saitabao Kaiyare, followed by a zoom conversation with Kaiyare and scholar/activists Njoki Ngumi (in Nairobi) and La Tanya S. Autry (in New York).
Using the film as a point of departure, the speakers will engage the audience in a critical conversation about colonial-era removals and thefts of African objects, restitution, and what it’s like being on the receiving end of long lost objects returning to Africa.
Connecting these three provocative thinkers in conversation across the Atlantic presents an excellent opportunity to reckon with these issues with African voices at the lead.
This hybrid event includes CART captioning and can be accessed in over languages 27 languages through Zoom.
The program has been made possible with generous support of the following cosponsors:
The Center for African Studies through the US Department of Education’s Title VI NRC Program, Krannert Art Museum, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, The School of Art & Design, Program in Art History, Department of History, Department of Anthropology, Women and Gender in Global Perspectives, The Office of Minority Student Affairs, the iSchool, the Bruce B. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center, and the Humanities Research Institute Supplemental Event Fund. In-kind sponsorship generously provided by Dixon Graphics & Weiskamp Printing.
GACF Planning Committee: Teresa Barnes, Fatou Jobe, Byron Juma, Toyosi Morgan, Julia Nucci Kelly, Joseph Obanubi, Allyson Purpura, Rachel Storm, and Hermann von Hesse.
