The Invention of African Art

It’s time for you to make your first blog post!

1. Visit the Reflect Blogging Resource Centre to learn how to create blog posts.
2. Pick ONE historical event that took place during the 15 years that your timeline group have been researching.
3. Write a concise summary of the event and its context. 
4. Offer at least 2 arguments for the broader significance of this particular event for cultural production in the region(s) and/or time period(s) you have been researching. Use evidence to substantiate your argument. 
5. At least 1 of your 2 arguments must make reference to a specific work of artwork, film, work of literature, piece of music,  performance, cultural event, etc. Describe this work as precisely as you can and explain its significance. Here is a sketch of an example:
   
   • Britain’s looting of the Benin Bronzes in 1897 (i.e. the historical event) has had a multiple cultural impacts, for example:
     • On western museology and on the emerging discipline of anthropology in the late 19th and early 20th century (remember Annie Coombes, 1997).
     • It provided inspiration for the organisers of Festac ’77, who used the royal ivory mask of Benin as the festival’s official emblem, and who campaigned unsuccessfully for it to be restituted to Nigeria for the event.
     • In the 1980s, a moment of racial reckoning in the UK, the Black British artist Tony Philips made a series of prints A History of the Benin Bronzes that revisited this history.
     • The Nigerian contemporary artist Peju Layiwola (scion of the Benin royal family) made a huge project about them called Benin 1897.
     • The Benin Bronzes are currently at the centre of restitituion debates.
   • Note that to fulfil the terms of the assignment, I would have to write about at least one of these examples in detail. 
6. Illustrate your post with at least 2 of any of the following:
   • Images
   • Videos
   • Sound files/podcasts
   • Any of the KnightLab storytelling tools
   • A GraphCommons network map. The sofware is free, online, easy to use and quick to learn. Maps can either be embedded in blog posts (in which case they are dynamic) or imported as image files (in which case they are static):
7. Recommend between 5 and 10 books, essays, articles, podcasts, films and/or websites that your reader can consult for further information.
8. If you cite any sources in the body of your text, please credit them in a bibliography. (This includes images, video or other media that you include.)
9. Give your blog post a title.
10. Publish your blog post.
11. Pat yourself on the back.
12. Prepare for the sessions with UCL Archive & UCL Art Museum on Thursday 18 November by:
    • • Reading Stuart Hall (2001) and Bruchet & Tiampo (2021). (Full details are in the course plan.)
      • Reminding yourself where you have to be at 10am:
        1. Groups A, B & C will start the day at G07, 222 Euston Road
        2. Groups D, E & F will start the day at the UCL Art Museum.
13. Give us your feedback on the mid-term course evaluation form.
14. Timeline Groups A, B & C must finish documenting and archiving their research. (See Step 4 of ‘Instructions for the Timeline Project.docx.’)
15. Rest.

---

I understand this photograph to have been taken at the First Pan-African Congress in 1900. I am extremely curious about the painting that is mounted above the podium . I wonder if it might be possible to track it down…

---

Some Useful Tips:

• If you need help trying to figure out how best to analyse the significance of the historical moment you have chosen to write about, I strongly recommend that you take a look at:
  • Analyze Anything: A Guide to Critical Reading & Writing by Gregory Fraser and Chad Davidson (2019). This book is available online via the UCL Library website.
  • Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997) edited by Stuart Hall – one of the founders of the discipline known as cultural studies – is a fantastically useful Open University textbook, full of incisive and accessible examples of how to analyse the meanings of cultural phenomena and media representations. There are a total of 18 hard copies in UCL libraries.
• For top-tier advice on how to get rid of pretentious academic jargon and write with confidence in your own voice, the very brilliant sociologist Dr Tressie McMillan Cottom has recently spoken to The Chronicle of Higher Education about how she has developed her unique and extremely accessible writing style. You will find a copy of the interview in the Reading Folder on MS Teams.

---

Word Limit: 500-750 words (excluding bibliography)

DEADLINE: Monday 15 November 2021 @14.00

You will receive feedback from us via MS OneNote within 7-10 days.

The two images have been sourced from Elizabeth Ofosuah Johnson, ‘The idea of an independent Africa was born at the first Pan African Conference in 1900’. Face 2 Face Africa. 1 September 2018.