Cambridge/Africa Collaborative Research Programme
Seminar Series Michaelmas 2012
Art and Museums in Africa
The Collaborative Research Programme is supported by the Leverhulme Trust and Isaac Newton Trust
Monday 29 October at 5pm, Room S1, ARB
Atta Kwami: Independent Artist, Art Historian and Curator
Grace Note
The talk assesses the legacy of Grace Salome Kwami (1923-2006) as a modern
Ghanaian artist, educator and mentor. Her varied oeuvre of photographs,
textile designs, terracotta figures, pots, portraits, drawings, paintings,
decorated calabashes, sculpture, bead work and dress-design are of such a
high and consistent standard that people are considering establishing an
art museum in her house in Ho, Ghana. Towards the end of her life Grace
Kwami spent many months in Kumasi, where she had trained in the 1950s as a
Specialist Art Teacher at the Kumasi College of Technology, (now the KNUST).
Atta Kwami is a Visiting Fellow at the Cambridge/Africa Collaborative
Research Programme, Art and Museums in Africa (2012/2013). He completed his
Ph.D. in Art History at The Open University in 2007. As a Senior Lecturer,
he taught painting and printmaking from 1986 to 2006 at the College of Art,
KNUST, Kumasi. A number of his paintings hang in major public collections
including the National Museums of Ghana and Kenya, the V&A Museum, London,
the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York and The British Museum.
This Seminar is accompanied by the exhibition ‘GRACE’ by Atta Kwami and
Pamela Clarkson. The exhibition is located on the 3rd floor of the Alison
Richard Building and will run until 15 March 2013.
Seminars are held in Seminar Room S1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road,
Cambridge CB3 9DT
For enquiries contact the Centre of African Studies on 01223 334396
centre@african.cam.ac.uk, www.african.cam.ac.uk
ACRAH 