How an African collection of art in Canada is celebrated with care and community

• A significant collection of traditional African art has had a home in Canada for almost a hundred years.
• At Agnes Etherington Art Centre, we are working on new, more hospitable practices of care for this collection.
• The African art collection, named after donors Justin and Elisabeth Lang, consists of approximately 600 three-dimensional pieces that originate from 19 West African countries.

European market in African art

• The European market in African art had boomed in the 1920s and 1930s.
• European enthusiasm for African art was partly due to its influence on modernist artists, such as Picasso, Cézanne and Gauguin.
• The establishment of an African art market therefore had direct ties to European colonial projects and imperial commercial networks that reinforced colonial violences.

At least four lives of the collection

• At the time, it was the largest collection of African art at a Canadian university.
• As a body, the collection has had at least four lives: one within Africa as an active part of everyday life, another in Europe as part of a thriving art market, in Canada as a private art collection and now as a museum holding on a university campus.

‘You are holding communities’

• In this film, Samwel Nangiria, Maasai community leader, notes:
  “You are not holding artifacts, you are holding communities … museums need to be a place of people, not a place of artifacts.
• When we see these objects we see our parents, we see our ancestors.”
  “You are not holding artifacts, you are holding communities … museums need to be a place of people, not a place of artifacts.
• How do we adjust our practices to respond to a colonial past and to the gaps in our understanding?

New curatorial approaches

• I was confronting isolation, impending economic migration to Canada and the start of curatorial work at Agnes and Queen’s University.
• I felt compelled to find new ways to enliven a collection that inhabited an awkward silence in the museum.

‘With Opened Mouths’

• For the Agnes exhibit With Opened Mouths, we discarded the glass display cases often used in museums and instead used labelling that echoed contemporary African signage.
• With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is a digital safe space where I interview racialized creatives to discuss their practice.

Moving out of the vault

• The collection will move to a temporary home on campus in preparation for renovations at Agnes.
• The move of the African collection out of the vault is momentous.

Celebration of presence, welcome, care

• The project emerged after Bitek’s first visit to the vaults.
• will be a moment of hope, welcome and care.
• In essence, these curatorial practices seek to acknowledge the African communities and artists who have, unknowingly, built up the collection at Agnes.