In 2023, The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA)’s working group on Collaboration, Collections, and Restitution Best Practices for North American Museums Holding African Objects (CCRBP) embarked on a series of listening sessions to better understand the needs of African-based colleagues.
Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Block Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, and her colleagues on the committee heard one challenge again and again: locating objects within the collections of different institutions was a barrier to access and collaboration.
So, as part of its mission to redefine best practices for US museums with African art in their collections, the CCRBP founded the Making North American African Art Collections Visible and Accessible subcommittee. Co-chaired by Berzock and Michigan State University Associate Professor Candace Keller, the committee began to envision a resource that would help to connect Africa-based specialists with African art objects in museums across the US.
“Recommendations include more than just ‘how do you make your collection more transparent or more visible,’ and ‘how do you engage in dialogue around ownership or possible restitution,’ but also equally importantly, ‘how do you collaborate and connect with African institutions and communities to work together to be good neighbors, good partners,’” Berzock said.
How do you collaborate and connect with African institutions and communities to work together to be good neighbors, good partners?
The subcommittee’s main focus is to recommend an aggregator that can provide a central access point for locating African objects in US museum collections. Through it, a single search for “Yoruba” could provide an overview of Yoruba pieces housed across participating US museums, with links to individual institutions’ websites for more information.
In addition to recommending the tool, the subcommittee’s three-year working plan also encompasses envisioning the specifics of the aggregator’s functionality and the collaboration it might encourage. It researched aggregators in other sectors, finding three that most closely resembled its vision – Getty Research Portal, enslaved.org, and Yale’s LUX – and created a list of standards for the information about African artworks in their collections that museums should make publicly available through their websites, including things like photographs, medium, and provenance.
“The idea here is to give advocates or allies within museums some language and resources that have been created by an organization that specializes in African art to explain to their institutions what the minimum standards are,” Berzock said.
Following its research and recommendations, CCRBP will seek funding to make the aggregator project a reality.
The subcommittee’s work supports nationwide efforts among Africa-focused museum professionals to expand dialogues and networks with African institutions and communities.
There was an overall sense that we needed an organized effort around questions of repatriation and, equally important, around collaboration, in the US, just as is happening in many European countries.
“There was an overall sense that we needed an organized effort around questions of repatriation and, equally important, around collaboration, in the US, just as is happening in many European countries,” Berzock said.
Berzock brings a rich background in African art history to her work with CCRBP. Trained as a historian of African art, she spent 18 years as The Art Institute of Chicago’s curator of African Art. In 2019, The Block presented Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa, an exhibition curated by Berzock representing the culmination of 8 years of work in partnership with colleagues in Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria and specialists across the US and Europe.
“I’ve come to really feel that partnership and community is so important to success and should be part of the expectations around the work we do in US museums, that we should be in dialogue with partners on the African continent as part of our professional networks,” Berzock said.
I’ve come to really feel that partnership and community is so important to success and should be part of the expectations around the work we do in US museums, that we should be in dialogue with partners on the African continent as part of our professional networks
Though independent of her work with The Block, she said her work with CCRBP represents similar values.
“It’s part of my ongoing work,” she said. “Caravans of Gold was just one step in an ongoing commitment that I have and that The Block has to connecting with African colleagues.”
