Saturday, November 14, 2009

Conference update...Ugiomoh made it!

Dr. Ugiomoh spent six days in Lagos (hundreds of miles away from his home in Port Harcourt), and was finally given the visa by 3:00PM on Friday. Which meant that he left for the airport from the Embassy. So, the conference organizers were relieved to see him Saturday morning. This afternoon he gave his paper "African art history after Hegel," which raised many questions about writing African art history. Dr. Gerhard Wolf of the Art History Institute in Florence gave a fitting bi-lingual lecture on "Art Histories or Art History?" to end the deliberations, which if anything showed once more--as did James Elkins's book Is Art History Global?--the multitudinous nature of this discipline today. The fact that these conversations are taking place at all says so much about the extent to which things have changed inside art history. Pfisterer and his team at LMU ought to be proud to have joined the leading front of the discussion.


Dr. Frank Ugiomoh taking a question from the audience after his presentation (Photo: Chika Okeke-Agulu)


Dr. Gerhard Wolf giving his presentation (Photo: Chika Okeke-Agulu)

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