A Transformative Gift

I first met Simon Ottenberg in the mid-1990s at the National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) in Washington DC. At the time, he was a senior research fellow working on the exhibition The Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group, which opened at NMAfA in 1997. I was then a graduate student from the University of Maryland on a year-long curatorial fellowship at the museum. Having some familiarity with the range of Simon's scholarship (his 1992 article “The Beaded Bands of Bafodea” was especially memorable to me), I was curious about his turn to focus on modern and contemporary artists from Nigeria. Simon was generous with his time and expertise. His knowledge of this area, along with his pioneering 1997 exhibition and related colloquium, was mind-expanding to me as a young scholar and aspiring curator, introducing me to many artists who at the time were largely unknown to Western audiences.Simon was among the scholars whose work encouraged my own in what was then an emerging field. When I joined the curatorial staff at the Newark Museum (now known as the Newark Museum of Art) in 2002, I redirected the department's focus from tradition-based historical arts to modern and contemporary arts of Africa, initiating an active program of acquisitions and exhibitions. A decade later, Newark's demonstrated commitment in this area, especially to neglected modernist artists, led to Simon's decision in 2012 to donate his personal collection of modern and contemporary art to the museum. He had developed the collection over fifty years, acquiring the majority of works during research trips to Africa, often directly from the artists themselves. The works represent important moments in African art history and were not readily available on the art market at the time. In fact, when Simon gave his collection to the Newark Museum, he was informed by a representative from an auction house that the market value of his collection was less than the cost of an appraisal. Needless to say, a lot has changed in the decade-plus since.Simon's transformative gift of some 145 works nearly doubled the Newark Museum's existing collection of modern and contemporary art. While the gift included work from throughout the continent, including South Africa, Sierra Leone, and Ghana, its strength resided in pre- and post-independence period Nigerian art. Among the highlights are a major watercolor by Akinola Lasekan from the early 1940s, important drawings by Uche Okeke from the 1950s through the 1970s, influential works by Jacob Afolabi from the 1960s, and significant works by Twins Seven Seven from 1964, the first year of the Osogbo workshop. These and other works (Fig. 1) were featured in the 2013 exhibition, The Art of Translation: The Simon Ottenberg Gift of Modern and Contemporary Nigerian Art, organized by Perrin Lathrop when she was working as a curatorial associate at the Newark Museum. Friends gathered in Newark to celebrate the exhibition and most of all, Simon, who received the Distinguished Collector Award at the museum's 2013 gala in recognition of his generous donation of artworks to the museum and his lifelong contributions to scholarship on African art and culture (Fig. 2).Simon's gift to the Newark Museum has also been transformative in other ways, seeding the work of the next generation of scholars and curators. Perrin went on from Newark to complete a PhD at Princeton University, writing a dissertation on the artist Akinọla Laṣekan, whose work she was introduced to through Simon's collection. She then expanded her research scope in developing African Modernism in America, 1947-1967, a groundbreaking (and award-winning) traveling exhibition coorganized by Fisk University Galleries and the American Federation of Arts. Henone Girma, who joined the Newark Museum in 2022 as Associate Curator, Arts of Global Africa, has been similarly inspired by Simon's collection. Her 2023 exhibition, Adama Delphine Fawundu: In the Spirit of Ase, featured new artworks by Fawundu created in response to works by Sierra Leonean artist Olayinka Miranda Burney-Nicol, the subject of Simon's 2014 monograph. Simon's field-shaping legacy extends well beyond his many and varied publications and extensive fieldnotes to so many of us who have followed in his pioneering path or been touched by his friendship, which was the greatest gift of all

Aesthetics · Art · Pedagogy · Sociology · Transformative learning · Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies

• The Beaded Bands of Bafodea

  Simon Ottenberg•African Arts•1992

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