Johanna M.C. Agthe: 1941-2005

Professor Till Forster (University of Basel):

Johanna Agthe had been a distant colleague until I took over Iwalewa-Haus in Bayreuth from Ulli Beier in 1997. Indeed, I had known her publications since I had been an undergraduate student and later used them in my own teaching. However, it was not until the late 1990s that we met in Bayreuth and Frankfurt, where she was curator of the Africa department of the Museum fur Volkerkunde (later Museum der Weltkulturen). We had not many opportunities to cooperate, but whenever we did, I was immediately reminded of her publications: She carefully examined every argument as well as every object, always trying to bridge the gap between anthropological and art historical approaches. She documented every object with equal care and very much in the tradition of the older German anthropological material culture school.

However, Johanna Agthe always hinted at the more general questions. Already in her first major exhibition catalogue, Kunst? Handwerk in Afrika im Wandel (Art? Changing craftwork in Africa), published in 1975, she was addressing the issue of changing art practices in Africa and how this translated into our conceptions of art and artifact. This topic often reemerged in the discussions we had when we were adapting exhibitions of Iwalewa-Haus for the different audience at the Frankfurt Museum. In 2000, the staff of Iwalewa and postgraduate students of Bayreuth University talked intensively with her about the notion of "work" in African art and also on gender perspectives therein. I remember these dialogues as vivid, at times controversial, but Johanna Agthe's sense of humor and dedication to understand the other's viewpoint made these exchanges more fruitful than many encounters with renowned professors. My memory of her as a scholar and a person is linked to her often informal but substantial influence on the discussion of art and artifact in Germany over three decades.

Elsbeth Court (School of Oriental and African Studies):

This memoir is being written in London while Johanna Agthe's burial service is taking place in Hamburg (March 31, 2005). Professionally, she strove for a holistic understanding of the visual arts in eastern Africa as encompassing all expressive practices. She was foremost a museum anthropologist--a maker of collections and exhibits--but she was also a scholar: Her publications comprise a sizeable percentage of the studies of post-independence art in Kenya. From the mid-1970s, due in part to her experience at Elimo Njau's Paaya-Paa Gallery, her annual field visits alerted her to the scope of art in East Africa and she took to documenting its contemporary production, beginning with Wegzeichen: Kunst aus Ostafrika, 1974-89 (1990). In a letter to me dated October 10, 1997, Agthe noted that she put "much weight on artist's comments of their own work ... it is not sufficient for me to read just summaries ... 'about them' ... I see the main task (at least for the moment) in talking 'with them' and make them talk for themselves." Her best-known project, Bilder aus Traumen: Jak Katarikawe, Uganda (2001) concerns the painter Jak Katarikawe. However, her first monograph, Ich babe sie studiert: Joel Oswaggos Zeichnungen und Erzahlungen uber die Freikirchen bei den Luo (Kenya) (1991) and exhibition featured Joel Oswaggo's drawings of the independent church movement amongst the Luo. Her final essay, appearing in Thelathini: 30 Faces of Contemporary Art in Kenya (2003), is also about Oswaggo and in March 2005, he spoke about her at the book's launch.

The contradictions surrounding contemporary "African" art are legion; the changes it represents are both problematic and vital, indeed constitute the regeneration of culture. By embracing this field, Johanna was plagued by persistent and particular sets of misunderstandings that continue to have salience. In Nairobi, the artists with whom she interacted did not understand that she was primarily a researcher; she bought their paintings, interviewed them, organized exhibitions in Germany, but she was uninterested in commercial dealing. In Frankfurt, most anthropologists had difficulty in comprehending modern art from outside Europe--especially the art of East Africa, which did not obviously illustrate ethnic traditions--and struggled with its inclusion in their museums. Agthe diplomatically, via UNESCO, instigated Galerie 37, a special space for new art on the premises of the Frankfurt Museum. Wherever she was, Johanna was ahead of her time. She had been looking forward to being in London during the "Africa05" visual arts season, especially to see the changes in the display of African art at the British Museum, where once she had been a research visitor.

She had a wonderful talent for friendship; how well she cared and shared. What was very special were her visual puns. My favorite is her 1998 greeting card: "Behind," the caption to a photograph of the Frankfurt Museum under renovation, wrapped up like a Christo installation. Specifically, the photo refers to delays on site when she had been acting director, but metaphorically it is a treasure--a very big delay, a burden, a cover-up, a surprise to be revealed.