This fall, several African-themed art exhibitions will be on display in Washington DC museums as many African nations prepare to celebrate 50 years of independence in 2010. Here are the highlights:
- The Kreeger Museum - Kentridge and Kudryashov: Against the Grain (Oct. 3 – Dec. 30, 2009) The museum is set to display the works of two of the world’s most significant printmakers. One of them, William Kentridge, was born in South Africa to an affluent anti-apartheid family, studied politics and African studies, and later took art classes and drama workshops at the Johannesburg Art Foundation. His poignant works are often expressions of a brutalized society left in the wake of an oppressive political regime. They will be on display alongside the work of another renowned printmaker – Oleg Kudryashov.
- The Phillips Collection - Man Ray: African Art and the Modernist Lens (Oct. 10, 2009 – Jan. 10, 2010) The exhibition explores the pivotal role photographs played in changing the perception of African objects from artifacts to fine art. More than 60 Man Ray photographs, many never before exhibited, along with 40 photographs by his contemporaries, will appear side-by-side with 20 of the African artifacts featured in the images.
- Anacostia Community Museum - The African Presence in Mexico (Nov. 8, 2009 – Jul. 4, 2010) This traveling exhibition focuses on the overlooked history of African contributions to Mexican culture from 1519 to the present day. It tells the little-known story of Afro-descendants in Mexico during the past 500 years, including the story of Yanga, an enslaved African who escaped to found the first free town in the Americas, near Veracruz, Mexico, in 1610.
- National Museum of African Art - Yinka Shonibare MBE (Nov. 10, 2009 – Mar. 7, 2010) The works featured in Yinka Shonibare MBE, a mid-career exhibition of the Nigerian-born artist, encompass the last 12 years of Shonibare’s career and explore contemporary African identity and its relationship to European colonialism through painting, sculpture, installation and moving image.
- National Museum of the American Indian - IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas (Nov. 10, 2009 - May 23, 2010) This 20-panel banner exhibition focuses on the interactions between African American and Native American people, especially those of blended heritage. It also sheds light on the dynamics of race, community, culture, and creativity and addresses the human desires of being and belonging. With compelling text and powerful graphics, IndiVisible includes accounts of cultural integration and diffusion as well as the struggle to define and preserve identity. By combining the voices of the living with those of their ancestors, the exhibition provides an extraordinary opportunity to understand the history and contemporary perspectives of people of African and Native American descent.
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