The subject line in the email was deceptive: “Nelson-Atkins Hires Esteemed African Art Curator,” it said. I almost archived it without reading.
The substance turned out to be more interesting. The N-A is indeed hiring the expertise of Nii Quarcoopome (below), the head of the Department of Africa, Oceania & the Indigenous Americas at the Detroit Institute of Arts — but only 25% of his time. The two museums are curator-sharing.
I think we’ll see more of this, and it may mean that curators will see their careers developing along a different path than in the past. More of them will be split between two museums and even more, I project, will become independent curators. Yes, I know that independents exist — I’m predicting that we’ll see more of them — and that they will be used more frequently by major museums. It will be a money-saving move for some and a convenience for others.
According to the press release, Quarcoopome, a native of Ghana, worked with the N-A in 2010 during the the installation of an exhibition he curated that was first shown at the DIA:Â Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500-Present. The exhibit, “a groundbreaking examination of how African artists expressed the interactions between African cultures and Europeans and Westerners….gave a wide perspective of the African point of view of Europeans, from first encounters and trade relations, to European settlements and colonization, through the contemporary years of post-independence.” (I didn’t see it.)
For his part, Graham Beal, director of the DIA, noted Quarcoopome’s “profound understanding of African society and material culture [which] has resulted in an installation of the DIA’s African collection that brings the art alive for many visitors” and said he was happy to share him.
Quarcoopome holds a doctorate in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been at the DIA since 2002. Before that he was a curator at the Newark Museum.
You can read more in the press release.