Returns: Rethinking Objects, Knowledge, and Relationships at the Fowler Museum

Monday, November 4, 2024
Fowler Museum A103B (Lenart Auditorium)
Reception at 6:00 pm
Lecture at 7:00 pm
Hosted by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

On February 5, 2024, the Fowler returned a group of objects to His Majesty, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the 16th Asante King (Asantehene). On July 23, 2024, 20 historical treasures were returned to the Warumungu community in Tennant Creek, in the northern Territory of Australia. Join Silvia Forni, the Shirley & Ralph Shapiro Director of the Fowler Museum, and Erica P. Jones, senior curator of African arts and manager of curatorial affairs, for a conversation about the processes that enabled these returns and what museums gain when they let go of certain objects.

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Dr. Silvia Forni joined the Fowler Museum as Shirley and Ralph Shapiro Director in December 2022. At the Fowler she is leading a team of dedicated scholars and museum professionals deeply invested in celebrating underrepresented artists and art histories and curating exhibitions and programs with and for the global communities of greater Los Angeles.  Before moving to LA she served as Senior Curator of Global Africa and Deputy Vice President of the Department of Art & Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. She is also associated with the Department of Anthropology of the University of Toronto as Associate Professor. She is the author of numerous essays and book chapters. Among her recent publications is the volume Making History: Visual Art & Blackness in Canada, co-edited with Julie Crooks and Dominique Fontaine (2023), Art, Honor, and Ridicule: Fante Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana (2017), co-authored with Doran H. Ross (Awarded the R.L. Shep Ethnic Textile Book Award from the textile Society of America in 2018) and Africa in the Market. 20th Century art from the Amrad African Art Collection. (2015) edited with Christopher B. Steiner (Awarded the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the Art Council of the African Studies Association in 2017).  

Dr. Erica P. Jones is the Senior Curator of African Arts and Manager of Curatorial Affairs at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. She received a Ph.D. in art history, with a focus in the arts of Africa, from the University of California, Los Angeles. Since joining the Fowler Museum in 2015, she has curated many exhibitions. A selection include The House Was Too Small: Yoruba Sacred Arts from Africa and Beyond (2023, co-curator), Gosette Lubondo: Imaginary Trip (2022, co-curator), Photo Cameroon: Studio Portraiture 1970-90s (2021, co-curator), Inheritance: Recent Video Art from Africa (2019), On Display in the Walled City: The Nigerian Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition 1924-1925 (2019), and Meleko Mokgosi: Bread, Butter, and Power (2018). Jones is a key member in the Fowler’s Mellon grant funded initiative “Collaborative Interdisciplinary Research on African Collections at the Fowler Museum.” She is currently on the board of African Arts Journal, serves as a co-chair of the steering committee for the Collaboration, Collections, and Restitution Best Practices for North American Museums Holding African Objects Working Group, and in 2024 led the Fowler Museum’s repatriation of seven looted objects to the Asante Kingdom in Ghana. Her publishing has been concentrated on colonial-era collecting, provenance, and the arts and museums of the Cameroon Grassfields. She is the author of the book accompanying the exhibition Bread, Butter, and Power.