Alisa LaGamma

Last updated

Alisa LaGamma is the Ceil and Michael E. Pulitzer Curator of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [1]

Contents

She received her PhD from Columbia University in 1995 for a dissertation titled "The Art of the Punu Mukudj Masquerade: Portrait of an Equatorial Society", for which she carried out a year of fieldwork in southern Gabon.

In 1998, she was a guest editor for "African Arts" journal.

In 2012, she received the Iris Award for Outstanding Scholarship of the Bard Graduate Center in recognition of her contribution to rethinking the history of sub-Saharan African art and culture. [2]

She curated the exhibition "Kongo: Power and Majesty". [3]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metropolitan Museum of Art</span> Art museum in New York City

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the fourth-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million visitors in 2023, it is the most-visited museum in the United States and the fourth-most visited art museum in the world.

Lowery Stokes Sims is an American art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art known for her expertise in the work of African, African American, Latinx, Native and Asian American artists such as Wifredo Lam, Fritz Scholder, Romare Bearden, Joyce J. Scott and others. She served on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She has frequently served as a guest curator, lectured internationally and published extensively, and has received many public appointments. Sims was featured in the 2010 documentary film !Women Art Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Catlett</span> American artist and sculptor (1915–2012)

Elizabeth Catlett, born as Alice Elizabeth Catlett, also known as Elizabeth Catlett Mora was an American and Mexican sculptor and graphic artist best known for her depictions of the Black-American experience in the 20th century, which often focused on the female experience. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C., to parents working in education, and was the grandchild of formerly enslaved people. It was difficult for a black woman at this time to pursue a career as a working artist. Catlett devoted much of her career to teaching. However, a fellowship awarded to her in 1946 allowed her to travel to Mexico City, where she settled and worked with the Taller de Gráfica Popular for twenty years and became head of the sculpture department for the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. In the 1950s, her main means of artistic expression shifted from print to sculpture, though she never gave up the former.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Okwui Enwezor</span> Nigerian-American curator

Okwui Enwezor was a Nigerian curator, art critic, writer, poet, and educator, specializing in art history. He lived in New York City and Munich. In 2014, he was ranked 24 in the ArtReview list of the 100 most powerful people of the art world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beembe tribe (Kongo)</span> Ethnic group

The Beembe are a Bantu people living in southern Congo-Brazzaville, precisely in Bouenza and in the cities of Brazzaville, Dolisie, and Pointe-Noire. It is a Kongo subgroup. The Beembe have some similar customs to the Kongo, which is what makes them a subgroup, but their art is what separates them apart. It is not clear when the Beembe separated from the Kongo but oral tradition suggests that it was some time around the eight century. They migrated Northeast from the Kongo and settled some five hundred kilometers from the capital of the Kingdom of the Kongo. This group was a part of the Kongo Kingdom during its height of power. The Beembe also have subgroups within it such as the Bisi-Nseke, Minkegue, Mmsumbu (Bambumbu), the Mongo, and the Musitu.Beembe society is economically based on agriculture.

Thomas Patrick Campbell is the director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, overseeing the de Young and Legion of Honor museums. He served as the director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art between 2009 and 2017. On 30 June 2017, Campbell stepped down as director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art under pressure and accepted the Getty Foundation's Rothschild Fellowship for research and study at both the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and at Waddesdon Manor, in the UK.

Álvaro V of Kongo, also known as Álvaro V Mpanzu a Nimi, was the ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo for a short period in 1636.


Antonio Zucchelli was an Italian Franciscan Capuchin friar, explorer and missionary. He is best known for his missionary work in the Kingdom of Kongo. In 1712 he published memoirs of his life in the Kongo.

Cornelia H. "Connie" Butler is an American museum curator, author, and art historian. Since 2023, Butler is the Director of MoMA PS1. From 2013 to 2023, she was the Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

William Buller Fagg was a British curator and anthropologist. He was the Keeper of the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum (1969–1974), and pioneering historian of Yoruba and Nigerian art, with a particular focus on the art of Benin.

Helen Anne Molesworth is an American curator of contemporary art based in Los Angeles. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benin ivory mask</span> Pair of ivory pendant masks from Benin Kingdom

The Benin ivory mask is a miniature sculptural portrait in ivory of Idia, the first Iyoba of the 16th century Benin Empire, taking the form of a traditional African mask. The masks were looted by the British from the palace of the Oba of Benin in the Benin Expedition of 1897.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi</span> Nigerian artist

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi is a Nigerian artist, art historian, and curator, currently curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was raised in Enugu and studied under sculptor El Anatsui at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, before traveling as an artist and curator. In the United States, he completed his doctorate at Emory University in 2013 and became the curator of African art at Dartmouth College's Hood Museum of Art. In 2017, he moved to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Nzewi has curated the Nigerian Afrika Heritage Biennial three times, the Dak'Art biennial in 2014, and independent exhibitions at Atlanta's High Museum of Art and New York's Richard Taittinger Gallery. Nzewi also exhibited internationally as an artist and artist-in-resident.

Carrie Rebora Barratt is an American art historian specializing in museum administration and collaborative nonprofit leadership. She has worked in this domain in New York City since the 1980s. Barratt was Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture (1989–2009), and Manager of the Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art (1989–2009) and Deputy Director for Collections (2009-2018) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She served as the Chief Executive Officer and William C. Steere Sr. President of The New York Botanical Garden 2018-2020 during a transitional period. Prior to that, she spent over thirty years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a curator and administrator.

Lauren Haynes is an American curator who is senior curator of contemporary art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Previously, she was director of artist initiatives and curator of contemporary art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Momentary in Arkansas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia L. Montgomery</span> American visual artist

Virginia L. Montgomery, also known as VLM, is an American multimedia artist working in video art, sound art, sculpture, performance, and illustration. She has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe at museums, galleries, and film festivals. Her artwork is known for its surrealist qualities, material experimentation, and thematic blending of science, mysticism, metaphysics, and 21st century feminist autobiography.

Luke Syson is an English museum curator and art historian. Since 2019, he has been the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, prior to which he held positions at the British Museum (1991–2002), the Victoria and Albert Museum (2002–2003), the National Gallery (2003–2012) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2015–2019). In 2011 he curated the acclaimed Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery: Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, which included his pivotal role in the controversial authentication by the National Gallery of da Vinci's Salvator Mundi.

Susan Mullin Vogel is a curator, professor, scholar, and filmmaker whose area of focus is African art. She was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, founded what is now The Africa Center in the early 1980s, served as Director of the Yale University Art Gallery, taught African art and architecture at Columbia University, and has made films.

Navina Najat Haidar is an art historian and curator, and currently serves as the chief curator of Islamic art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

<i>Before Yesterday We Could Fly</i> Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room is an art exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The exhibit, which opened on November 5, 2021, uses a period room format of installation to envision the past, present, and future home of someone who lived in Seneca Village, a largely African American settlement which was destroyed to make way for the construction of Central Park in the mid-1800s.

References

  1. Dan Duray (January 9, 2013). "Met's Africa Department Head, Julie Jones, to Retire, Alisa LaGamma Named as Replacement". Observer. Archived from the original on July 19, 2018. Retrieved July 18, 2018.
  2. "Staff List". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Archived from the original on July 19, 2018. Retrieved July 18, 2018.
  3. "Curatorial Chat | Alisa LaGamma on curating 'Kongo' and running the Met's Rockefeller Wing". Center for Curatorial Leadership. November 2, 2015. Retrieved July 18, 2018.