Join us for an engaging symposium exploring the hidden histories of objects in the GWU African Art Collection.
Using archival research, provenance investigations, contextual interpretation, and retrieval, students will reconstruct the cultural symbolism of Indigenous objects donated to the university in the 1970s. The symposium offers a public demonstration of how artifact biographies are reconstructed and how the historical, social, and aesthetic dimensions of African material culture are brought to life in the context of restitution debates.

Speakers:

Jovanna Abdou
Angela Lewis
Leehe Peleg
Frieda Wilson
Grace Suter
Gabriella Smith
Madeleine Keiser
Jalen Long
Eve Rozier
Temiloluwa Osunjimi
Jessica Weiss
Noor Benzing
Kaitlyn Segreti
Kallie Yahner
Katherine Schrett

Image Caption: Tall Bobo masked dancers from the Village of Gossina, Burkina Faso, date unknown, Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher.