Sightlines : On Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts In Africa

New modes of displaying and viewing African art and material culture.

At the heart of SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa is a design-focused question of how to present historical and contemporary works alongside one another. Through the use of a long wall designed by the architectural firm AD–WO for the 2023 exhibition, Bard Graduate Center invited visitors and interlocutors to engage with African art in a variety of ways.

As part of the exhibition, the department of public humanities and research at BGC worked with curator Drew Thompson to craft a vigorous and lively series of public programs, inviting guests to create their own sightlines. Participants mary adeogun, JJJJJerome Ellis, Jessica Lynne, Annissa Malvoisin, Maaza Mengiste, and Okwui Okpokwasili offered their vantage points, illuminating various aesthetic, functional, and symbolic uses of the metalworks on view, and highlighting the modes of historical analysis and storytelling behind the contemporary works.

This book gathers those sightlines with photographs of the exhibition installation and other illustrations selected by the authors. An introductory essay by curator Thompson grapples with current debates on the display of historical and contemporary art of Africa and the Black diaspora. Exhibition designers and curatorial advisers Emanuel Admassu and Jen Wood present a visual essay on the inspiration for and the ideas behind their long-wall display. The book also features an interview between Admassu, Thompson, and Wood.

SIGHTLINES marks a different approach to scholarship around exhibitions in two immediate ways. First, it showcases how visitors engaged with the exhibition through its design and display of objects. Second, it provides an opportunity to highlight the kinds of research and cultural insights that a collaborative and design-focused curatorial approach provides. The publication is the first Bard Graduate Center book to explore the visual and material culture of Africa and the Black diaspora, delving into the history of the metalworks as well as larger debates on collecting practices, museum display, gallery education, and provenance.