Henry John Drewal is the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Art History and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has published numerous books, edited volumes, exhibition catalogues, and many articles on African/African Diaspora arts. He is currently developing his approach for understanding material culture/arts, cultures, and histories called Sensiotics which considers the crucial role of the senses in shaping body-minds.
Tell us about your academic
background and how you became interested in your research area?
I was an
undergraduate at Hamilton College majoring in languages—French and Spanish, and
some Russian—with a minor in studio art because I’ve always had an interest in
making: my father was a New York City fireman and fine craftsman and I was his
apprentice for many years. After I
graduated, I joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to teach French and
English in a secondary school in Nigeria. This was in 1964, not long after they
gained independence.
From my students, I learned Yorùbá (the language in this part of southwestern Nigeria) and started to get to know my community. I eventually became friends with a Yorùbá wood sculptor who agreed to let me apprentice under him, which I did for about eight months. This changed my life. It was a transformative experience that made me realize the importance of multi-sensorial bodily knowledge that eventually led to my approach termed Sensiotics. I realized then that I wasn’t going to become a language teacher, I was going to learn what I could about African arts and cultures and share that knowledge.
After I received my PhD in 1973, I started teaching. My first job was in an art department that combined art history with studio art at Cleveland State University. Eventually, I became department chair and an adjunct curator of African art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where I curated two or three major exhibitions and developed their collection. In 1990, I was recruited by the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a job I couldn’t refuse— an endowed chair in art history. I was also able to continue my curatorial work at the University’s art museum, which is now the Chazen Museum of Art.
I have been
teaching African and African diaspora arts since I started in 1973. My specialty
in Yorùbá arts and culture has allowed me to research beyond
the shores of Africa. Many Yorùbá people, because of a century of warfare and
conflict in the nineteenth century, were captured in the battles that they lost. They were then
enslaved, and transported to the Americas in quite large numbers, mostly to
Cuba and Brazil. I have done a lot of work on the influence of Yorùbá descendants
in the arts in those two countries. I’ve also studied other African descendants
in Mexico and in Panama, but mostly I’ve concentrated on Cuba and Brazil. I
have also done research and writing on the arts of a little-known African
diaspora in South Asia, specifically in Karnataka-India, where they are known
as Siddis.
What attracted you to our fellowship?
I was a lead faculty
member in the development of a curatorial studies program in my department at Wisconsin
when we invited Professor
Ivan Gaskell to a symposium about it. His advice was greatly welcomed. As a
result, he learned about my work, and I learned about his. About a year or two later,
Ivan, along with the Chipstone Foundation’s
Jonathan Prown and Sarah Carter, organized a Chipstone workshop at Bard
Graduate Center. There were, I think,
twenty-five or thirty of us participating— Ivan had invited me to present on art
and the senses because that’s what I’m working on these days.
I had such a wonderful time at the workshop, meeting other presenters and talking with Ivan and other BGC faculty members that I thought I would love to come back in some way. Not long afterwards, an announcement of the fellowship crossed my desk, so I applied for it.
One result that will come out of this fellowship is the research that I am doing for an upcoming collection-based exhibition, and its accompanying book, called Striking Iron: the Art of African Blacksmiths. I am one of four curators involved, and I am looking at iron work related to pieces that will be displayed. I am working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Newark Museum.
The
fellowship has also given me the opportunity to write up the material that I
have recently collected in Morocco on their blacksmiths—the results of a Senior
Research Fulbright I received from January until the end of April this spring. For the exhibition book, I’m taking an approach
that I call Sensiotics, which is a theory and method that I’m developing that
looks at the importance of remembering all of the multi–sensorial elements that
go into our life experiences and our interaction with objects — not only through
the sense of sight but also through sound, touch, smell, taste… whatever. Ultimately these ideas will be incorporated into
the next book, which will focus specifically on understanding our
sense-abilities and how these shape us as individuals and social beings over
time.
What
are your plans following the fellowship?
In
the fall, I am teaching a curatorial studies course. My students will be
working on various aspects of an exhibition that will open in January 2018 in
the new Design
Gallery at UW-Madison— in the School of Human Ecology where there is a
program in design studies that is very much focused on material culture
matters. I am organizing an exhibition called Whirling Return of the Ancestors, which focusses on Egúngún regalia
that is worn in masquerades honoring the ancestral spirits of the Yorùbá
people. There are two such ensembles in the Helen
Louise Allen Textile Collection. A former student, who teaches at the Rhode
Island School of Design, and I commissioned a new one from West Africa that
will also be displayed. I have other objects that we’re considering, as well. I’m presently preparing the seminar syllabus that
will outline the various tasks my students will work on for the project. All of this has to be in place by November so
that the Design Gallery staff can install the exhibition by its January
opening.
What advice do you give your students
as they embark on their careers?
One of the first
pieces of advice that I give to all of my students is to “follow your passion”—to
follow the things that excite them the most; something that they
are passionately connected to. If they choose topics or work situations that
they’re not that interested in, they’ are not going to carry it very far. So I
always say, “to the greatest extent that you can possibly do it, follow your
passion.” Along with that, comes the advice that they be prepared to be
flexible and adaptable to changing situations no matter where they work.
Whether they are employed independently or in large institutions, they have to
be in touch with the circumstances and conditions of the situation they are
operating in.
Finally, I think museums and curatorial work can be wonderful teaching tools not just for those in higher education but for the general public. I am very concerned about the level of education in this country or the lack of commitment to it by certain powers. That is something that we must fight against as strongly as possible. Democracy cannot survive with an ignorant citizenry.