New displays of African collections: Aso-oke, a Celebration of Style & Townships Journeys

Brighton Museum & Art Gallery are delighted to present two new displays highlighting rich and evolving fashion and identity practices in Africa. These displays have been co-curated with researchers from the African diaspora who live in Sussex. They are part of the Object Journeys Fashioning Africa project in partnership with the British Museum.

On display are post 1960’s textiles and garments collected as part of the Fashioning Africa project, historic African textiles and beadwork from Brighton Museum’s collections and objects on loan from the British Museum. Four films accompany the displays. These feature in-depth interviews with the curators, footage of the production of aso-oke fabric and of some of the displayed outfits in use.

The displays have been co-curated by Edith Ojo, Tshepo Skwambane and world art collection staff, and supported by the British Museum. Through the process of co-curation, Edith and Tshepo have shared their cultural knowledge, expertise and experiences of growing up in Africa, to provide new interpretations for the displays and to breathe new life into historic African objects.

Edith Ojo with the Aso-Oke display (c) RPMAG

Aso-oke, a Celebration of Style, curated by Edith, showcases aso-oke fabric and fashion and reflects Edith’s rich Yoruba, Nigerian heritage and the role aso-oke plays in this. She states “It says party, that’s what aso-oke says to me. I love the spectacle and performance that surrounds aso-oke. It’s so culturally vibrant and constantly evolving.”

 

Tshepo Skwambane with Township Journeys (c) RPMAG

Township Journeys, curated by Tshepo Skwambane, demonstrates the important role that fashion and identity played for black South Africans living in townships. The display reflects Tshepo’s childhood experiences growing up in a township during apartheid, and the rich cultural mix of people he encountered there. He states “I want to challenge and dismantle stereotypes about Africa and Africans. Apartheid enforced separate and defined communities, but you can’t stop interaction between people and ideas.” 

 

Fashioning Africa is a Heritage Lottery Fund Collecting Cultures project. With the support of a collecting panel, Brighton Museum has been able to acquire new objects that reflect post-1960 African fashion identities.

This display is part of Object Journeys, a national programme run by the British Museum and supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It supports community partners to research and explore museum collections and create new displays in response to this investigation.

Words Matter: Book Launch, Tropen Museum.

BOOK LAUNCH: WORDS MATTER Thursday 28 June 2018 | Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam The Research Center for Material Culture cordially invites you to an evening on repairing, refusing and re-imagining language to mark the launch of our publication WORDS MATTER. Recent controversy in the Netherlands surrounding whether museums should change the titles of some of their paintings and refrain from using discriminatory words in wall texts or catalogues is in part the lead up to this publication and symposium series. The emotionally and politically charged nature of discussions in the media surrounding the proposed changes should persuade anyone in doubt that words matter, that language matters. This is not an issue for just a small group of experts, but an ongoing dialogue between colleagues, neighbors, strangers and friends. It is a discussion that is embedded in a larger societal dialogue that debates issues of citizenship, belonging and representation in The Netherlands and beyond. Indeed, it is not just words that matter: the perspectives or the position from which one writes or displays also matters. In this context, it is important to interrogate our personal and institutional relationships to categories, terminologies and meanings. To whom does language belong? In what ways can language become more inclusive to those who have been marginalized or excluded within our societies and institutions? Who is included in or excluded from ‘modern’, non-‘Western’, ‘traditional’, ‘us’ and ‘them’? And what is the correct pronoun to describe someone who self-identifies as transgender? The publication WORDS MATTER is the physical manifestation of the museum’s long-term commitment to becoming a more inclusive institution and is the result of multiple, long-term projects that aim to dissect and dismantle some of the complex contested words, stereotypes and concepts that are present not only in cultural institutions, but also in the media and society at large. The symposium is a critical celebration and a stage for artists, academics and the audience to question, refuse, provoke and engage (with) contested languages and their presence within our institutions, societies and relationships. The program consists of two events: a day program for heritage professionals and cultural producers, and an evening program for general audience. Program • Ogutu Muraya (Writer and Storyteller) • Astrid Roemer (Writer) • Eliza Steinbock (Leiden University) • Kira Wuck (Poet) • Simone Zeefuik (Writer and cultural programmer) Practical Information Where: Tropenmuseum, Linnaeusstraat 2, Amsterdam When: Thursday 28 June 2018, 19:30 – 21:30 Admission: € 8 (incl. publication) - Get your tickets here Language: Dutch and English

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Spectrum 5.0 – Draft list of term sources. Input requested.

Lost for words?

When following a Spectrum procedure, you will often be advised to record something using 'a standard term source'. But what sources? And where to find them? Using consistent terms is crucial for retrieving information quickly and accurately when you want it. To help you do this, we've drawn up a list of the published term sources we know about, mapped to relevant Spectrum units of information. This is still a working document, and we need your help. Please take a look at the draft document and use our online form to help fill the gaps. Are there published term sources we have missed? Do you have in-house terms you would be willing to share with us, and possibly with the wider sector? Thank you, in advance, for your input.

Read and comment on the draft list of term sources

Keti Koti Talks : Perspectives on the Slavery Past and its Afterlife

Keti Koti Talks : Perspectives on the Slavery Past and its Afterlife SUNDAY 1 JULY 2018 | OOSTERPARK  Boni Tula stage | Free entrance | 4.45 pm - 5.45 pm Perspectives on the Slavery Past and its Afterlife is a series of short lectures presented during Keti Koti that explores the link between the Dutch slavery past and current structures of power, exclusion, and inequality. Slavery as a dehumanizing practice created structures of relations that still live with us today. Like other former colonial powers, the Netherlands owes its wealth and elevated position in the world, in large measure, to its past colonial activities. This power and privilege came at a specific cost to the formerly colonized and enslaved: the Africans that were captured, enslaved, and subjected to a brutal process of dehumanization. The same Africans that facilitated a thriving (plantation) economic system in the Dutch Caribbean, that generated wealth for individual owners and their descendants, as well as for the Dutch Metropole. How do we repair a history that is not yet acknowledged for its complexities, nor considered a shared past? Within the context of the Keti Koti commemoration and celebration, the Research Center for Material Culture invites an interdisciplinary group of thinkers, designers and artists to share their critical perspectives on the legacies of slavery and the colonial past in contemporary Dutch society. These talks give insight into how different sets of practices connect and how the legacies of slavery and the colonial past manifest in the present. This event takes place at the Keti Koti Festival at the Oosterpark and is a prelude to the exhibition on slavery and colonialism (medio 2021) at the Tropenmuseum. This exhibition explores the Dutch history of slavery and colonialism, and its afterlives in the present, through the lens – the experiences - of the enslaved and their descendants. More than a series of facts, or the expected telling of the triangle trade, the exhibition zooms in on the condition of enslavement, the (cultural) responses of the enslaved, and the experiences of those living slavery’s afterlife in present-day Dutch society. SPEAKERS and PERFORMERS Researcher Mark Ponte (Stadsarchief) Lecturer Grace Ndjako (Universiteit Amsterdam) Barby Asante (curator and artist) Moderator: Aspha Bijnaar (independent researcher) Keti Koti stories by Bibi Fadlalla (filmmaker)

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