Remembering Roy Sieber (1923–2001)

I met Dr. Roy Sieber in 1965, during my senior year at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University). He was on campus to give lectures about African art and culture to Peace Corps Volunteers destined to serve in Africa. As a non-PCV, I could not attend those lectures. Instead, we met at the College Museum1 where I had been a student assistant since my freshman year. Evert Johnson, director of the museum, had invited his good friend and African art expert to evaluate the African art collection. Although I was familiar with the collection, I had little understanding of the importance, especially of the Kuba materials given by William Henry Sheppard (Figs. 1–2). I assisted Dr. Sieber during his visit and in the process developed a greater appreciation for and understanding of the artworks. This encounter cemented my desire to work in a museum and began a long and beneficial association with my mentor, one that endured over three decades.In my estimation, Roy Sieber (1923–2001) is the First Ancestor of the discipline of African art history. As the first to earn a PhD with a specialization in African art, he is the academic father of a large family of scholars. Awarded the degree by Iowa State University (now University of Iowa) in 1957, he enjoyed a long, productive career as a highly respected and much-admired professor and museum professional. Moving to Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1962, he earned the title Rudy Professor of African Art early in his tenure; he retired in 1993. He was a published author, innovative curator, and an arts administrator. Long involved in appreciation of the object and having developed the eye of a connoisseur, he became an advisor to collectors, a consultant for museum collections, and strove to develop the ideal university collection of African art. He did likewise as the Associate Director for Collections and Research at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art from 1983–1994. During his tenure at Indiana University, Dr. Sieber taught hundreds of undergraduates and mentored graduate students, of some fifty of whom earned the MA or PhD degree in African art under his supervision; I am among the latter group of Sieber graduates. Dr. Sieber's extraordinary career has been reviewed by Doran Ross (1992), and memorialized by Robert Farris Thompson (2001), Robin Poynor (2001), Christine Mullen Kreamer (2003a–b), and Stephen Mellor and Dana Moffett (2003), among others. I would like to add this personal remembrance of my mentor, surrogate father, boss, colleague, and friend. While I always referred to him with affection as “Papa” (which he knew but did not seem to mind) and we had a genuinely close relationship, I could never call him Roy. He will always be “Dr. Sieber.”When Dr. Sieber asked about my plans for graduate school, I shared with him my desire to work in an art museum and plan to apply to Oberlin College, the rare American institution at the time that offered any kind of museum training.2 Dr. Sieber helped me refine my career goal and suggested I consider applying to Indiana University instead of Oberlin. I did; and thanks to Dr. Sieber, I enrolled in the fall of 1966 with financial support and the title of “Graduate Research Assistant in African Studies in the Art Department.” I received a new name, too: “Intrepid,” the name Dr. Sieber gave to each of his graduate assistants.Dr. Sieber's mark on the professions of African art through his academic progeny can be noted in several areas. He mentored more than fifty students who went on to populate colleges and universities through the United States. In each, he instilled an appreciation of the object and an understanding of how to explain the object in the context of the culture that produced it. Whether his students went on to teach in colleges and universities or assumed museum positions, the idea of the “sacredness of the object” had been firmly planted in their minds. His devotion to the object and understanding of how that object came to be and what it meant to its creators made an impact not only on his teaching but also led him to explore these ideas by placing objects in exhibitions. These exhibitions were instrumental in introducing African art to great numbers of museum visitors but also inserted important academic ideas into scholarly discussion.In 1966 Indiana University, because it had a thriving African Studies Program, was a magnet for students who wanted to pursue advanced degrees. The university offered courses on anthropology, folklore, geography, history, African languages, ethnomusicology, and, of course, African art history. Some of Dr. Sieber's students were former Peace Corps Volunteers who probably had heard him lecture at other PVC training sites, while others, like me, arrived straight from college; still others had already begun their doctoral programs and by the time I arrived were back from fieldwork. Included in this group were: Arnold Rubin, who had come with Dr. Sieber from the University of Iowa and was the first to earn a PhD; William “Bill” Fagaly, who earned a MA degree in 1966 and went to work at the Delgado Museum (renamed New Orleans Museum of Art), where he stayed for fifty glorious years; and René Bravmann, who became a professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. My classmates included Anita Glaze, a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Côte d'Ivoire Coast, who studied the Senufo, while Babatunde Lawal, who hailed from Nigeria, focused on art related to Shango, the Yoruba god of thunder. After teaching for several years in Nigeria and the United States, Tunde settled at Virginia Commonwealth University until his retirement. Emannuel Odita, also from Nigeria, joined the faculty of Ohio State University, Columbus, and Daniel Mato returned to Canada to teach at the University of Calgary. Robin Poynor, who succeeded me as an “Intrepid,” focused on Yoruba art in Owo, Nigeria. He honed his teaching skills in correspondence courses on African art for Indiana University Division of Continuing Education and eventually enjoyed a stellar career teaching at the University of Florida, Gainesville, until his retirement in 2016. My class also included Martha “Marty” Ehrlich, who pursued Asante royal regalia and after stints as an itinerant art historian, finished her dissertation and went on to teach African art at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, until her retirement in 2012. Three of our classmates completed the MA degree under Dr. Sieber's guidance: Robert Boyce, who went on to do a PhD in architectural history and taught at his alma mater, Berea College in Kentucky; Lou Ann Lambeth, who taught for several years at Governors State University before she moved to Urbana, Illinois, to pursue a degree in museum studies; and Constance Kemmemer, who went into the health and wellness field.When I returned to Indiana University in 1970 to begin work on my PhD, Fred Smith (Kent State University), Judy Perani (Ohio University), Marcilene Wittmer (University of Miami), Lisa Aronson (Skidmore College), Mary Jo Arnoldi (Smithsonian Institution), Christopher Roy (University of Iowa), David Binkley (Nelson Adkins and Smithsonian Institution), and Patricia Darish (University of Nebraska) had joined the Sieber clan. Subsequently, Dr. Sieber would direct the doctoral programs of another generation or two of students: Arthur Bourgeois (Governors State University), Diane Pelrine (Indiana University Art Museum), Christine Mullen Kreamer (Smithsonian Institution), William Dewey (Pennsylvania State University), Michael Conner (Southern University of New Orleans), Cornelius Adepegba (University of Ibadan), Kristyne Loughran (independent scholar, Florence, Italy), Andrea Nicolls (Smithsonian Institution), Kathy Curnow (Cleveland State University), dele jegede (Miami University of Ohio), Barbara Frank (State University of New York, Stony Brook, and my “spiritual child”), and Ray Price, Kay Dowling, Johanna Edwards, and Karen Brown.During the Smithsonian years, Dr. Sieber split the year between Washington, DC, and Bloomington, where he continued to teach and mentor African art history majors as well as serve on many dissertation committees with Patrick McNaughton. They cochaired Kristyne Loughran's committee. Among the many for which Dr. Sieber served as committee member after his retirement were Rebecca Green (Bowling Green State University), Victoria Rovine (University of North Carolina), Alice Burmeister (Winthrop College), Kathleen Bickford Berzock (Art Institute of Chicago), Tavy Aherne (Indiana University Art Museum), Joanna Grabski (Denison University), Suzanne Gott (University of British Columbia), and Terri Sowell, who majored in Oceanic art. Dr. Sieber's last committee membership was for Amanda Carlson (University of Hartford), who defended in 2002, after his death.In addition to Fagaly, Kemmemer, and Lambeth, other Sieber students who received only a MA degree in African art include Peggy Pulliam McDowell (University of New Orleans), Sara Hollis (Southern University of New Orleans), Rachelle Puryear (Swedish Royal College of Art, Stockholm), Ted Celenko (Indianapolis Museum of Art), and Gilbert Ametgatcher (Kwame Nkurumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana). Dr. Sieber also mentored graduate students majoring in other disciplines. This group includes Paula Girshick (anthropology; Indiana University), William Siegmann (history; Brooklyn Museum), Edward DeCarbo (anthropology; Pratt Instiute), James Bellis (archaeology; Norte Dame University), and Philip Peek (folklore; Drew University). Dr. Sieber was also involved in the PhD programs of students from other universities: Robert Soppelsa (Washburn University and Art in Embassies, US State Department), came to spend a year with Dr. Sieber from Ohio State University, where his professor was Emannuel Odita. When Robert Goldwater died in 1973, Dr. Sieber served as the primary reader for Susan Vogel's dissertation.As indicated above, the majority of Dr. Sieber's graduates became professors of art history, thus expanding the course offerings in this country. Several members of this group curated African art exhibitions from time to time. However, several of his students devoted their careers entirely to museum work. Members of this group include: Peggy Gilfoy (Indianapolis Museum of Art), William Fagaly (New Orleans Museum of Art), Ted Celenko (Indianapolis Museum of Art), and William Siegmann (The Brooklyn Museum). Several of us were career curators at the Smithsonian Institution: Andrea Nicolls, David Binkley, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and I joined the National Museum of African art while Mary Jo Arnoldi, despite being an art historian, headed the Anthropology Division of the National Museum of Natural History.Dr. Sieber was an engaging teacher whose lectures in a dark auditorium kept his students awake and enthralled. He used to bring real African sculptures to class for examination with one's eyes and nose and hands. He discussed not only form, style, and aesthetics of the objects, but also placed them within their cultural and historical contexts. He made us aware of proximity and influence. I can still hear him explain that Africans did not live in hermetically sealed vacuums but were in contact with their close and distant neighbors through trade, conquest, or other means. They might incorporate some element of the other's style in their own art or obtain from others certain types of objects for their own use.He made us aware of sources he had utilized to understand African art that include early traveler and missionary accounts of particular peoples. He also cautioned one to understand the bias of the authors of such reports. That was good advice for life in general. Dr. Sieber's approach to teaching combined the methodologies of art history and ethnology that he learned from the professors he most admired: Meyer Schapiro at the New School of Social Research, New York, and Melville Herskovits at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Schapiro greatly shaped the discipline of art history at the time, forging new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art. His association with Schapiro, whose expertise on early Christian, medieval, and modern art, allowed him to explore art historical periods and movements with an eye towards the social, political, and the material construction of art works. Having begun as a medievalist, Dr. Sieber understood these premises as he moved into the study of African art. In fact, he saw parallels between medieval art and African art in the importance of art in religious and leadership contexts. He incorporated these ideas learned early on at the New School in his dissertation. Influenced by Herskovits's concept of anthropology, Dr. Sieber investigated all elements of human existence and all facets, emphasizing for his students that objects did not exist alone. Then it moves with people, with all of those things that make a “culture.”Dr. Sieber did not provide a syllabus at the beginning of a course. Rather, he provided a reading list—which included Schapiro's essay on “Style” (1961)—and had the books placed on reserve in the Fine Arts Library. He expected us to read those He did not students to his lectures on but to sources was a about a particular which majors a were to was of course, a in Dr. Sieber, whose personal in the in and Nigeria helped us our own the art history professors served as curators at the university art Dr. Sieber was the of the arts of and His for object” led him to provide with art in the These were and While we never an for the university art museum, several art history and students to an in the Anthropology a or of Poynor an in the to with a on African and curated an with Art Museum African and produced a His the of an to me on the to a museum Dr. Sieber me to a and give at the University Art which I I being a on one most of the were at a I also about to Dr. Sieber me in his to do and African in the of offered another for me to for Dr. He was to be a consultant to the of of the (renamed the Museum of African American which was to a museum on African history and culture in As it Dr. Sieber also received an to teach at the University of When the me as a for Dr. Sieber, I went to where I learned that the museum had a that was expected to be with and to in at the State I was to work with a and Professor an from State I was not to be consultant but a and of the history I could and returned to Bloomington, but I did I the I Dr. Sieber expected me the to despite the that that Dr. Sieber was in Arnold taught the while on his dissertation. I a but teacher who students in of his in my examination that he expected their He Indiana University in to teach at where he was a whose African art to such as the arts of and the as well as the arts of the his personal he had Sieber had a He gave his time, offered and his careers by their in and for them to Arnold Rubin, for was his on of and which produced in This with the by in the which had African Instead, Sieber and the between the art object and the African languages, and between and among and the and that to African style areas. When the of as a in Robin Poynor, the “Intrepid,” with Dr. Sieber an to the and Sieber and Sieber and Poynor being for two as a at the Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, and of the University Art at the University of and a as at the of by Dr. was back at Indiana University in 1970 as a in the Studies and in the School to pursue my Dr. Sieber's 1970 had been on and arts in Nigeria with the of an African art and who had made a of such objects, began to work on a focused on the and of the human I was invited to with the my was to visit and the of the objects we to obtain I could about and Dr. Sieber me to a This was my first important thanks to Dr. and the in at the Museum of Art, New of the and served to the of African art, which until that time had been for the most to and this Dr. Sieber and objects to the human of its time, of African art to be to objects did not include of or Africa. within that Dr. Sieber that style or has been He objects he of in The that the was at the Museum of Art, was on Dr. Sieber was emphasizing not great of objects during the course of African it was only that Dr. Sieber plan a focused that would the of African art. he and a by a most of Dr. Sieber's for was with from rare books early and art at Indiana University, this time he the of his graduate students Martha and Mary Jo Arnoldi and graduate David Binkley, Patricia and Michael While I was not of the the was at the Brooklyn Museum in Dr. Sieber, who was asked me to give a in his a years in Nigeria where I was of Collections at the University of I returned to the United in and at Illinois State University, I of curator, and director of the University which included a collection of African art. the of Dr. Sieber, I was the of at the New York, in Barbara a student at Illinois University, Bloomington, my African art course and her I her to study under Dr. Sieber, which she did and earned a PhD in three years before I earned After years, I was to be a I returned to the Museum of African Art to the of of In the on in the had been by the Smithsonian by of and in the National Museum of African the retirement of the the was on for his In to for a to serve on the I I Dr. Sieber to apply for the he and who had been a student of Robert Goldwater at the Institute of Fine New University, and of African Art at the Brooklyn were such great that the Smithsonian of with as the Director and Dr. Sieber as the Associate Director for Collections and I used to him about how I him a at the was not the only Sieber student to work at the In time I was joined by Andrea Nicolls, David Binkley, and Christine Mullen Kreamer at the National Museum of African Mary Jo Arnoldi went to work at the National Museum of Natural René was at the National Museum of African Art in new National Museum of African Art was to on the National with exhibitions in in with Andrea Nicolls curated an of the collection, while Dr. Sieber a of from important and the I was his assistant but was to and of Art in the of an Dr. Sieber his concept and for the that began life as in African The was to be and the of works of African art and them in a focused on and of the to and of and religious and of and highly human and to and and the and would the of African sculptures from and their most and The was to include works that met two Dr. Sieber also the and art historical in by the that make an art object a of a Art in the of was by a with by Dr. the and and were by His published an of his concept and for the history, style, and of and years this an not only for African art for the first time but also for and scholars. its this has the of exhibitions and collection at the Museum of His me in of works for were not from the exhibitions. Peggy an early Sieber graduate curated of African Dr. Sieber's which with his retirement in he the National Museum of African the of works that met the and expanding the of the collection to include and art. over a the devoted to art and in of was devoted to from his Dr. Sieber continued to the he was a professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville, where he taught and students an African art He and to several African in the Institute of Art and African and of Arts a in African Art and and Sieber with Frank Director of at the Museum for African The several ideas in exhibitions such as Art in the of and and and the and the Sieber strove to and to the of African art. at the as an for time through the of the idea of a in the of as a of as a and as an process of Continuing ideas in the not only but also and other objects of and were included in the Although most of the objects in the were and objects of can be as a I curated an of works by of a Yoruba was only that Dr. Sieber the to the my because he had me to pursue the study of this whose work was included in two of the of the collection and Art in the of I was director of the National Museum of African Art by that time and his of and the as I to and Sieber's was a He had back before after and I was he would He had been after than I am he he I like all of his he and was his me to Robin Poynor as at his at Indiana While our is he a real in our and for the of African art history students to

Art · Psychoanalysis · African history and culture analysis · Architecture, Art, Education · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Psychology

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