African tribal art has long been treasured by wealthy Western collectors, but increasingly the continent’s contemporary art scene is the one making its presence felt at museums, auction houses and art fairs.
The trend is spurred by wealthy Africans supporting home-grown talent and European collectors searching for the next big thing. Several London galleries focused on African art have opened in the past few years, the flagship Tate Modern has set up an African acquisitions committee, and this year’s sale of African art at the auction house Bonhams has passed the 1 million pound ($1.6 million) mark.
Kenya is holding its first commercial auction of East African art in the capital, Nairobi, with 47 works going under the hammer.
Prices are expected to range from several hundred dollars for some pieces up to more than $28,000 (£17,400).
The auction is a sign of the growing profile of the region’s art scene, as well as the growth of a a wealthy elite, experts say.
The Annual SANAA Africa Arts Festival is a spectacular showcase of South Africa and African artists across carious genres. It will celebrate the spirit of Africa through arts and entertainment, creating impact nationally, regionally and internationally as part of Africa Day 2013.
Due to mandatory budget cuts required by the deficit reduction measures known as sequestration the Museum of African Art
” Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough told Congress earlier this month that sequestration would force the Smithsonian Institution to close some of its many galleries. “We cannot keep every gallery or exhibition in every museum open daily without sufficient security,” he told members of the House Oversight Committee. Among the cutbacks the Smithsonian is being forced to make is the amount it can spend on contracted security guards who mind its museums.”
“…Mr Lee, a businessman and martial arts expert in a dapper powder-blue jacket and slicked back hair, is among a new wave of international buyers trying to boost the profile of African art. “African art is now getting more attention from Korean, Japanese collectors – I want to see the east African art market boom,” says Mr Lee, who lives between Nairobi and Seoul and set up his own gallery, Africafe, in Seoul.
The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College has appointed Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi as its first Curator of African Art. A specialist in modern and contemporary African and African Diaspora arts, Nzewi will be responsible for the documentation, preservation, research, and development of the museum’s African art collection—which encompasses some 1,900 historic and contemporary objects from all regions of the continent in a variety of media—and will engage Dartmouth faculty and students in the development of curricular and co-curricular programming related to the museum’s African holdings. He will begin on August 26, 2013.
The New African Photography looks at this fast-changing continent through the eyes of its most acute observers: its photographers. Few regions remain as photographically misrepresented as Africa, but this six-part series profiles the continent’s latest generation of photographers, who are taking back control of their image with a more nuanced portrayal.
As Kenyan fashion photographer Barbara Minishi says, “Don’t look at Africa and think one thing. How come this view of Africa is always the soldier or the starving child?.”
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is of Ghanaina descent, born and based in London she atteneded Central Saint Martins, Falmouth College of Arts and Royal Academy Schools. She is currently represented by Corvi Mori. An imaginary painter, her shortlisted exhibition Extracts and Verses (at the Chisenhale Gallery) consisted of portraits of black people with invented histories, black bodies the focus of her loose European-style traditional painting. We’re encouraged to stare at them and think about how we read pictures, how we read black subjects.
