(Missed) Connections and Context: American Exhibits/Audiences and Modern African Art: A Critical Review of Encounters with the Contemporary

Abstract

Encounters with the Contemporary is a yearlong exhibition of contemporary African art drawn from the National Museum of African Art’s permanent collection, curated by the museum’s new modern and contemporary curator, Elizabeth Harney. The exhibit is divided into three sections, installed for four months each; I will be writing on the first third of the exhibit, which ran from January through April 2001. The works included in each four-month phase are further divided into the areas of: A Journey Toward Freedom, Building Blocks to an African Modernism, Printmaking, and Globalism and Diaspora.