The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art opened in late October 2014 in Cambridge, Mass., its exterior walls serving as both real and metaphoric grounding for the Hutchins Center for African and American Research at Harvard University (of which The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., is director).
The operatic opening notes in “Nine Moments for Now,” a sweeping exhibition about democracy, race, and society at Harvard’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, are grounded in violence and grief.
Bathed in warm light, the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery’s newest exhibition, “Wole Soyinka: Antiquities Across Times and Place,” provides a critical take on a collector’s purpose. Slated to run through December 21, the show provides the setting for a series of related book talks scheduled in the coming few weeks. The exhibition skirts canonical Western museum practices and speaks instead to the act of collecting as a living, breathing tradition meant to promote dialogue.
Like visiting a new land, viewers of Wole Soyinka’s collection of African sculpture and art in Cambridge will likely encounter works of stunning craft and power that make them want to know more about the artisans who made them and the Nobel laureate who brought them together.
Nigerian playwright and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s collection of African traditional art includes bold, expressive masks, vessels, and figures — carved in wood, cast in bronze, sometimes adorned with beads or feathers. We don’t know who made them. We do know how they were made.
They are the starting point for “Wole Soyinka: Antiquities Across Times and Place” at Harvard University’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African...
Curated by Awam Amkpa, Professor, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, WOLE SOYINKA: Antiquities Across Times and Place is the first exhibition composed of African art since the Cooper Gallery first opened its doors in 2014. What started as an idea generated from conversations about aesthetics between a student and his mentor have blossomed into a gallery filled with wonder. In an effort to challenge the boundaries of history’s impact on the present, Amkpa juxtaposes works of...
Wole Soyinka is someone to celebrate. Africa's most acclaimed writer, dramatist, poet, novelist, "writer of genius", politico activist who spent 22 months as prisoner of conscience and, for the most part has transcended negativity in a host of camps. He’s been iconic across the board, with his mad hair, quick, hip wit, and his work, which will be along …a long time. His is uncommon work, perhaps monumental.
“WOLE SOYINKA: Antiquities Across Times and Place,” on view at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art in Harvard Square, features nearly three dozen objects from the famous African playwright’s personal collection. Contemporary works by Nigerian artists who have been inspired by Soyinka’s writing augment his personal pieces. The resulting exhibition presents a dynamic response to the question, “What does it mean when artists collect art?”
For photographer Dawoud Bey, activism and art have long been linked. Bey, whose portraits of Harlem form the centerpiece of the exhibit “Harlem: Found Ways” now at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, first connected with his chosen visual medium through a protest.
Through July 15, Harvard’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art analyzes the history and changes in a historic neighborhood in “Harlem: Found Ways.” Anchored by two photo series by Dawoud Bey, created 40 years apart, the exhibit highlights the gentrification that’s changing Harlem’s identity as a famed black culture capital.
La galería Ethelbert Cooper de Arte Africano y Afroamericano, espacio expositivo de la prestigiosa universidad de Harvard, acoge, por primera vez en su historia, la muestra personal de un artista cubano, Juan Roberto Diago, quien expone 25 obras realizadas en técnicas mixtas e instalaciones y que abarca con una mirada retrospectiva más de veinte años de una fructífera carrera artística.
Diago: Los pasados de este presente afrocubano es la primera mirada seria y sistemática de Estados Unidos al artista contemporáneo más destacado de Cuba, Juan Roberto Diago, y su prolífico trabajo. Diago es miembro destacado del nuevo movimiento cultural afrocubano, que ha denunciado la persistencia del racismo y la discriminación en la sociedad cubana. En esta exposición de 25 obras multimedia e instalaciones, se abarca la dinámica carrera de Diago desde mediados de la década de 1990, cuando comenzó a construir una historia revisionista de la nación cubana a partir de la experiencia de una... Read more about El Planeta: 'Exposición de arte contra el racismo y la discriminación'
After it appeared in the Cooper Gallery’s 2015 group exhibition Drapetomanía, Juan Roberto Diago saw his mixed-media piece Yo soy monte (I Am the Mountain) enter the Museum of Fine Arts’ permanent collection. A few years later, the 45-year-old Cuban artist now finds himself back at the Cooper Gallery—only this time as the subject of his first major retrospective. Curator Alejandro de la Fuente scours his two-decade-plus career, in which he’s examined Cuba’s African diaspora and tackled political and social issues.
El curador Alejandro de La Fuente y el artista plástico Juan Roberto Diago han logrado un acontecimiento sin precedentes: presentar en los predios de la Universidad de Harvard la muestra «Diago: Los pasados de este presente afrocubano», una retrospectiva de la obra del artista. Diago es el primer cubano en tener una exposición indiviual en dicho recinto.
Curated by Alejandro de la Fuente, Diago: The Past of This Afro-Cuban Present at The Cooper Gallery presents Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy’s first retrospective. Diago’s work is expository; a knowledge producer, Diago reconstructs a new history of the Afro-Cuban cultural movement. In so doing, Diago’s work exposes the history of oppression from the perspective of both oppressed and oppressor, forcing acknowledgment and revision of subjugation.
Juan Roberto Diago is a leading member of the new Afro-Cuban cultural movement, which has valiantly denounced the persistence of racism and discrimination in Cuban society. This exhibition of twenty-five mixed-media and installation artworks trace Diago’s vibrant career from the mid-1990s, when he began to construct a revisionist history of the Cuban nation from the experience of a person of African descent. It is a history of enslavement and cultural loss, but also of resilience and recovery, the kind of history that is required in this Afro-Cuban present.
The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at Harvard University presents the exhibition ‘Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present’, curated by Harvard University professor Alejandro de la Fuente. The show opens to the public on February 1 and runs until May 5, 2017. This exhibition includes 25 artworks of mixed media and installation art that span Juan Roberto Diago’s vibrant career, since the mid-1990s, when he began to construct a revisionist history of the Cuban nation from the experience of a person of African descent. It is a history of enslavement and cultural... Read more about ARC Magazine: 'Harvard University presents ‘Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present’'
This exhibition includes 25 artworks of mixed media and installation art that span Diago’s vibrant career, since the mid-1990s, when he began to construct a revisionist history of the Cuban nation from the experience of a person of African descent. It is a history of enslavement and cultural loss, but also of resilience and recovery, the kind of history that is required in this Afro-Cuban present.
