VCU Hosts Daylong Symposium on Yoruba Art

By Tom Gresham

Virginia Commonwealth University will host a major symposium on Yoruba art on Feb. 6, featuring illustrated lectures by six internationally acclaimed scholars and artists.

The symposium, “Yoruba Art: Continuity and Change,” will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Grace Street Theater, 930-934 W. Grace St. Attendance is free and open to the public.

The symposium is being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art” on view at the VCU School of the Arts Anderson Gallery from Jan. 16 to March 1. The symposium is organized by the VCU Department of Art History, the VCU Department of African American Studies and the Anderson Gallery, and co-sponsored by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Friends of African & African American Art.

Featured speakers during the symposium include:

• Suzanne Preston Blier, Allen Clowes Professor at Harvard University, “Teleology and Taxonomy: Ife Art Through History”
• Henry John Drewal, Evjue-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Ifa Arts of Divination and the Senses”
• Richard Woodward, senior deputy director and curator of African Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, “Luck and Destiny: Yoruba Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts”
• John Mason, director of the Yoruba Theological Archministry, “The Dolls Live On: Eshu and Ibeji in Salvador Orisha Worship”
• Arturo Lindsay, professor at Spelman College, “Dancing with Gods in My Art and in My Life”
• Robert Farris Thompson, Colonel John Trumball Professor at Yale University, “Spirits Uphold Us: Three Orisha and Their Art”

Also participating in the symposium are Babatunde Lawal, professor of art history at VCU and the author of the catalogue “Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art,” and Sonya Clark, chair of the VCU Department of Craft and Material Studies and the organizer of the “Beaded Prayers Project,” which is showing at the Anderson Gallery in tandem with “Embodying the Sacred.”

For more information about the symposium, contact the VCU Department of Art History at 804-828-2784.