Regis students recontextualize Library's African Art collection
The Regis University Library is home to an extensive archive of historical records, manuscripts and publications, alongside the special collections of unique historical objects and artifacts for students, staff and the public to view and study. Among them is the somewhat small –– and relatively unknown –– African Art Collection, a part of the Special Collections. The set of 24 pieces, given to the University by generous donors, were sourced from south of the Sahara, in West, Central and East Africa.
Khristin N. Montes, M.A., professor of fine and performing arts, has created an opportunity for her students to use their skills to permanently reshape the context of these pieces at Regis. Montes, as the only full-time art historian at Regis, has taken on the mantle of decentralizing the art history curriculum from the Western canon.
“My specialty is in Indigenous arts of the Americas,” Montes said. “As someone with a background in Native American art, I also know a lot of African and other Native art because even when I was in graduate school as somebody who specializes in the non-West, I was expected to know about it because of the way that Indigenous art was originally collected.
Inspired by the African Art collection at Regis, Montes offered the course "Decolonizing African Art," with the intention for students to both teach and to learn about the real-world applications of art history using decolonization on the institutional level.
“I find it really useful for my own research and teaching to think through things,” Montes said. “This was a way that I could teach African art in a manner through which we could use the things in our collection to learn from. Through creating an exhibition with labels that are more sensitive to the cultures that they're representing, the students become teachers for the campus and beyond.”
Historically, Indigenous art from Oceania, Africa and the Americas, as Montes described, were collapsed under the genre of "primitive art." This diminutive classification has restricted and exoticized the study of Indigenous artifacts, deriving misleading descriptions of these artifacts.
Students began in the classroom researching African art throughout the continent in various time periods. As an upper-level course, students brought their own prior expertise with art history and the ongoing research of the course to inform their own “formal analysis” of their chosen artifacts. A “formal analysis” refers to a historical and artistic methodology for understanding unknown art when given little to no context.
“The research that the students did was important because we replaced the narrative with something that was appropriate for the reasons those objects were made,” Montes said. “For example, we found out that a thing that was called a ‘fetish’ was part of a very complex ritual sequence. In some cases, the labels were entirely wrong. We needed to provide more historically accurate cultural information that was sensitive to what those things were actually made and used for.”
For the Regis University Library, updating the collection has been incredibly transformative. Hannah Miller, Regis’ archives and digital collections librarian, described how the African Art collection, while incredibly high quality, was integrally incomplete.
“The first time I was asked by a professor to pull some of the artifacts out for a classroom visit, the documentation that came with the collection, as well as what was filled in by previous archivists, was very sparse,” Miller said. “We decided to use it as a teaching tool as a way for us to be vulnerable about our institution.”
Collaborating together, Montes and Miller organized the exhibition with the work of class member and student intern Frank Revare. Beyond the classroom, Montes hopes that her courses provide meaningful vocational experiences through the support of the University.
“We certainly couldn't do this work without donations,” Montes said. “They are important because any sort of resources to support the arts is great. Again, this kind of real-world experience is very important for our students. Even if we don't end up with a full exhibition, students see what art historians do in real life.”
“Decolonizing African Art” is now on display through Jan. 24 at the Regis University Dayton Memorial Library. This exhibit is free and open to the public.