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The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Galleryhosts "A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art," an exhibition of more than 90 paintings depicting Patrice Lumumba, the first Congolese prime minister after independence from Belgium, as hero and cultural icon. The exhibition is on display through Saturday, March 18.
To supplement the exhibition, the gallery will host a roundtable discussion of Congolese art and politics, on Thursday, March 2, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The discussion will be moderated by Susan Vogel, professor of art history at Columbia, with Johannes Fabian, professor of cultural anthropology and non-Western sociology, University of Amsterdam and 2005–2006 Fellow at the Stanford University Humanities Center; Didier Gondola, associate professor of history at Indiana University-Perdue University Indianapolis; Beguile Laval, Quebec; Crawford Young, Jewsiewicki, professor of history at Universite Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This traveling exhibition, organized by the Museum for African Art, features paintings of Patrice Lumumba that exemplify the Congolese tradition of venerating mythic or cultural heroes. These powerful depictions helped transform Lumumba, who rose to become Congo's first prime minister after its independence from Belgium in 1960, into an African and African-American hero as well as a Congolese cultural icon. The exhibition includes a series of nearly 50 paintings by Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu, an influential artist of the 1970s, and a number of recent works by contemporary Congolese artists who emulated his style.
With its timely opening at Columbia in February during Black History Month, "A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art" provides both a focus and a forum for discussing the interplay between art and politics in the making of an African legend.
The traveling exhibition is made possible through a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Support for the creation of the exhibition was received from the LEF Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. The showing at the Wallach Art Gallery has been made possible in part by an endowment established by Miriam and Ira D. Wallach.
Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 1:00 -- 5:00 p.m. Wallach Art Gallery is located on the 8 th floor of Schermerhorn Hall. |
