Dr.
Blackmun Visonà has traveled extensively in Africa, and
she has conducted fieldwork in Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire,
and Senegal. As an undergraduate at Stanford University she
studied the art of Europe and ancient China, and her graduate
work included courses in the art of the Pacific Islands, Native
North America, and the ancient Mediterranean. This broad background
led her to develop courses surveying World Art, and she has
served as a consultant on “non-western art” to publishers
of art history and art appreciation textbooks (including Gardner’s
Art Through the Ages, Gilbert’s Living with Art
and Artforms).
Dr. Blackmun Visonà is the principal author of the critically
acclaimed survey A
History of Art in Africa (Abrams/Prentice
Hall 2000), and will be preparing a second edition during Fall
2005. Her research for the chapters on the art of Northern Africa,
Eastern Africa, the Nile Valley and the Bend of the Niger led
to her interest in the arts of African Islam, and she has studied
the archaeological record of many African sites. The book’s
discussion of contemporary arts draws upon her research into
the theoretical issues raised by the critical reception of works
by living African artists. Because this book is focused upon
the art history of the African continent rather than upon the
objects now residing in European collections, it includes arts
which are discussed as architecture, performance and installations.
During 2004-2005, Dr. Blackmun Visonà was a Senior Fellow
at the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution.
There she prepared her doctoral and post-doctoral research on
the arts of the Lagoon peoples of southeastern Côte d’Ivoire
for publication as a monograph. Her articles on the art history
of these groups, who are distantly related to both the Baule
and Asante, have appeared in scholarly journals such as African
Arts. She is organizing a related exhibition on “Divinely
Inspired African Artists: The Arts of the Lagoon Peoples and
their Neighbors”, which will be accompanied by a collection
of scholarly essays. She is also preparing a traveling exhibition
of architectural studies by African and non-African photographers
(“Interior/Exterior: Photographs of African Architecture”).
|

|
|