Class dates: Mondays, September 14, 28, October 5, 19, 26 (5 weeks)

Class time: 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm

Location: Assumption, Kennedy 119

This series of lectures is an introduction to African Art, its variety of forms, the depth of its history, and how it became important in Western culture and the global world. There is a loose order to these talks, and reading will be suggested for those wanting to delve more deeply into the topics. We will cover African Art from its earliest periods through contemporary; beginning with Rock Art, Black Egypt (Nubia), and the medieval world when Africa was part of world trade networks through the Trans-Saharan trade routes and the Indian Ocean trade. We will look at masquerade - an important art form in Africa - and examine African sculpture's links to Western modernism. We will end with a consideration of forms from the Black Atlantic world. An optional walk through the Fitchburg Art Museum's current exhibition Festival with curator Jean Borgatti will cap the series. Entrance to the Fitchburg Art Museum is free.

Suggested reading: African Art in Detail , Christopher Spring, Harvard University Press, 2010; ISBN-10: 0674036220; ISBN-13: 978-0674036222

The Bright Continent , Open-source on-line text by Kathy Curnow, emeritus professor Cleveland State University. Downloadable as a pdf (free) at https://www.academia.edu/50969635/Bright_Continent_African_Art_History

A History of Art in Africa, 2nd edition . Monica Visona et al. 2008. Pearson/Prentice Hall. Text only is available on-line at   https://uknowledge.uky.edu/art_textbooks/1/

Instructor: Jean Borgatti  has been consulting curator of African and Oceanic art at the Fitchburg Art Museum since 2010, and helped organize and document a growing collection of African and Oceanic art and developed a long-term exhibition of the collection. She has faculty status at Clark University where she taught between 1984 and 2004 in the Visual and Performing Arts Department, and at Boston University where she has been a research fellow at the African Studies Center. She received her B.A. in Art History (Modern Art) from Wellesley College in 1966, and her M.A. and PhD in Art History (Non-Western Art) from UCLA in 1971 and 1976 respectively. She has carried out extensive research in Nigeria in 1971-1974 (doctoral research), 1979 (post-doctoral research) and as a Fulbright scholar between 2002-2004 as well as 2014-2016. She has organized several major exhibitions at FAM (Global Africa--2014-2018, Moving Objects-- 2018-2024, Africa Rising--2024-2024, and Festival--current--through Dec. 3, 2026).