Linda Duke — Africa on My Mind

This post comes from Linda Duke, Director of Community and Education Affairs at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Note the World AIDS Day event she mentions. It's scheduled for Dec. 1:

In the name of World AIDS Day, individuals of all ages are invited to make a colorful card to send to a Kenyan living with HIV. This program is co-presented by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the IU-Kenya Partnership, and IMCPL. This program will be held in the Central Library Atrium.

Linda Duke — Africa on My Mind, 11/13/08

How odd that I should begin to encounter Africa by moving to Indianapolis. Who knew that African connections would come up again and again in this small Midwestern city! Since arriving to work at the IMA five years ago, I’ve had the opportunity to explore the museum’s fine collection of traditional African art, and to encounter the work of several African artists working in more contemporary veins. In the past year, especially, Africa has become a recurrent theme in my life/work. A committed group of people – some museum professionals and others art collectors, academics or simply concerned citizens – has included me in their regular meetings to explore ways for Indy to become a more global city, especially vis a vis Africa. I’ve been in touch with people, both here and in Africa, who are interested in making the museums of Nigeria as excellent as any in the world. I have had the pleasure of helping to host a leading African thinker on museum practice and issues, Dr. Boureima Diamitani, executive director of the West African Museums Programme. (see my post under Education on the IMA’s blog).

Maxwell Anderson (IMA) and Boureima Diamitani (WAMP) discussing the global role of museums, Oct. 9

And then there’s the IU-Kenya Partnership. The IMA will partner with this organization and the Central Library to observe World AIDS Day in a few weeks.

Most recently, I have been in conversations with two astoundingly creative artists who will create public projects for the IMA over the next year: San Francisco-based choreographer and site-specific performance artist Joanna Haigood (www.zaccho.org), and acclaimed LA-based filmmaker Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust, The Rosa Parks Story). Both of their rough-draft plans have, interestingly, led to African connections. Joanna would like to work on an IMA project with Tanzanian-born musician and instrument inventor Walter Kitundu (Google this man and you will be amazed – see, especially, the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjPUfGm1XjU).

Julie, who hopes to work with teens on the idea of transformational experiences, has become fascinated herself with West African masquerades and will pursue that interest as she mentors the young filmmakers.

So little by little, I’m beginning to learn about Africa. Unexpectedly, I have come to think of Africa as the future, our collective future. The way Africa fares – languishes or blossoms - in the near future will say a lot about the world in which all of us will soon live, African or not.