African Art in Iowa: New Approaches to Collecting, Curating, and Engagement at the UI Stanley Museum of Art

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When: Tuesday, September 1st @ 12:15pm 
Where: Online via Zoom
Please register to receive a link to join the online program live.

Join us online for a program from Kimberly Musial Datchuk and Cory Gundlach, who will speak to us on "African Art in Iowa: New Approaches to Collecting, Curating, and Engagement at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art." ​

Kimberly Musial Datchuk has a PhD in art history with a specialty in nineteenth-century European art. As the Curator of Learning and Engagement at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art, she connects the museum to the public and UI campus through teaching, research, and programming. At the Stanley, she has curated several exhibitions that center the work of women and the struggle for social justice, as well as an international loan exhibition on Ferdinand Bac. Her research and curatorial interests include institutional critique and the intersection of art, gender, sexuality, and technology, particularly in fin-de-siècle France. She has presented her research throughout the United States, as well as France, England, and Poland.  ​

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Cory Gundlach has a PhD in art history with a specialty in African art. He began his art museum career in northwest California in 1998, and worked with museums of history, science, and art in Colorado before joining the staff as a curatorial research assistant at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art in 2012. Soon after completing the Art & Life in Africa website, he accepted his current position as curator at the museum. Since 2015, he has curated nine installations of African art at the Stanley Visual Classroom, including his most recent exhibition, Follow Her Lead: Womanhood in African and Diasporic Arts. In 2017, he curated a major exhibition of contemporary sculpture by Eric Adjetey Anang in the Black Box Theater, and in 2019, he collaborated with UIHC Department of Radiology to conduct computer tomography (CT) analysis on selected works in the Africa collection. He is currently planning a re-installation of the African collection for the new museum.   
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What's new with African art at the Stanley Museum? To answer this question about activities today and visions of the future, we will take a brief look at what's been done with African art at Iowa in the past. Historically, what goals have driven the museum's collecting practices and exhibition programs for African art, and how were they realized? What has changed over time and what is consistent to Iowa's use of African art? Answers to these questions will offer perspective on recent examples of engagements with African art at the museum today, and the opportunity to consider new directions in the future. We will conclude with a look at how students and faculty have helped shape our vision and participated in exhibitions and programming. ​