Relating the past to the present - Brief Article

African Arts, Autumn, 2001 by Babatunde Lawal

Sidney Kasfir notes that the groundbreaking work of African curators and critics in recent years has brought contemporary African art into the limelight, making it a viable field of study. Yet most current professors, curators, and critics of African art were trained predominantly in the so-called classical genre. As a result, many graduate students who have done fieldwork in contemporary art now know more than their own professors, thus reversing "the traditional direction of the flow of knowledge."

While African curators and critics should be commended for drawing attention to the originality or highly expressive quality of contemporary African art, much of the credit should go to the artists themselves. Also deserving recognition are the very same professors who were trained in the "classical" genre; their teaching and publications have contributed in no small measure toward the decolonization of art education in Africa. So long as contemporary African artists make direct or indirect use of "classical" forms and ideas, the expertise of these professors will continue to be relevant to the critique of contemporary art and the training of graduate students who want to specialize in it.

As a matter of fact, many of the "classicists" have updated their knowledge by doing fieldwork in contemporary art. For example, Sidney Kasfir herself has just published a critically acclaimed book on contemporary African art. Others have been involved with the subject all along because they initially specialized in studio arts before receiving doctoral degrees in art history. I belong in this category. Thus, from my own perspective, the problem is not as serious as it seems.

However, this is not to deny the fact that graduate students who have done intensive fieldwork may know much more about a given topic than their professors. But this phenomenon is not peculiar to the African art field; it is found in most disciplines that require doctoral candidates to research new topics or areas. And given the eclectic nature of teaching, it is not a "reversal" of the traditional flow of knowledge as such. The exchange of ideas between the supervisor and the supervised advances rather than reverses the flow, as the information gained by a professor in the course of overseeing dissertations on different topics is invariably transmitted to other students.

All the same, I quite agree that a professor who has little or no background in a particular area may be unable to provide adequate supervision in that area. From my own standpoint, the solution to the current problem lies not in forcing all African-art professors to become equally competent in the "classical" and contemporary genres. Rather, it depends on convincing our universities that in light of recent developments in our field, more than one professor is now needed to teach all the required courses. In short, an ideal program should offer courses in the major areas of African and African diaspora art. This will provide a framework for relating the past to the present. The main obstacle is funding such positions. Hence the need for a joint action cannot be overemphasized.

Babatunde Lawal
Department of Art History
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, Virginia