The re-envisioned African Art gallery presentations reflect not only the rich diversity of African art but also challenge visitors to think critically about the cultural significance, origins, and impact of the objects.
Following a multiyear transformation, the African Art galleries reopen at Mint Museum Randolph
By Jen Sudul Edwards, PhD
The Mint’s African gallery reinstallation has been over five years in the making. When I joined the Mint as chief curator in July 2019, I saw my first challenge as how to overhaul important spaces for which the Mint did not have a curator on staff. I had accumulated a decade of art history classes, none touched Mesoamerican or African art, reflecting the Western focus prevalent in graduate programs at the time.
Post-graduate school, I sat in on classes at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte led by associate professor of art history Lisa Homann, PhD, to fill gaps in my knowledge and because I was fascinated by the stories she told and challenges she faced in her field. All research involves a bit of spy work, but for Africanists, there is barely any thread to grasp in the complicated trail of making and ownership. When I joined the Mint, I knew that she was the Africanist I would want to evaluate the work in the Mint’s existing African collection and guide the collection forward.
The transformed galleries reopened in February at Mint Museum Uptown. Homann combed the Mint’s files and assessed each work to develop the installation now on view. A notable new work is one commissioned from David Sanou, a Burkina Faso masquerade maker, that not only brings an exceptional work into the Mint’s collection but offers new ways to think about how museums can collect and display work historically handled by non-experts (me included), but that remains essential for cross-cultural understanding.
The growth of the collection
The Mint’s African Art collection began in 1975 with a few key pieces, including a rhinoceros-hide shield from the Bantu peoples and a granary door from the Senufo peoples. For many years, the museum relied on donors to shape the African Art collection. Early on, African works shared space with other collections at Mint Museum Randolph, which housed everything from Contemporary Art to Mesoamerican pieces.
As the collection grew, the focus on African art expanded. During the tenure of curator Michael Whittington (1993-2003), new works were added. Though African art was not his area of expertise, he worked with scholars and focused on pieces that complemented the Mint’s broader collections, like ceramics, creating unexpected connections across time and cultures. Occasionally, exceptional pieces with detailed ownership records came available. A rich and beautiful example is the Hunter’s style Shirt, which has been on view almost continuously since its purchase in 1999. It serves as a focus of Homann’s new African gallery installation.
Around 2012, Michael Gallis, a UNC Charlotte professor, collector, and Mint Board of Trustee, encouraged the museum to deepen its commitment to African art. With his support, the installation expanded from one gallery to two and included new works from his and other private collections, either given or loaned to the museum. To prepare for the reinstallation, Gallis helped the Mint host
a symposium, led by Herbert (Skip) Cole, PhD, from the University of California Santa Barbara, to discuss the importance of African art in museums and as a field of study. This resulted in the 2014 Mint publication “Art in the Many Africas,” along with new galleries installed by Cole.
As the field of African studies has exponentially grown over the last 10 years, and further attention to how Western (mis)perceptions have subjectively defined the field for centuries, the expectations around collecting and displaying works from Africa continue to change. Homann explores this in her reinstallation, which draws from the Mint’s permanent collection; the private collection of Michael Gallis; and Asif Shaikh, a collector recently relocated to Charlotte. This is a fluid field and the Mint will continue to work with Homann and others to share reconsiderations and evaluations as they arise.
Jen Sudul Edwards, PhD, is chief curator and curator of Contemporary Art at The Mint Museum.
Read more about recognizing provenance in the galleries.