Overview
Contemporary African Art
at Harvard Business School
Opens February 2024
Online Exhibition
Celebrating the vibrant African contemporary art scene, this online exhibition features works from the Schwartz Art Collection and the C. Ludens Ringnes Sculpture Collection. Harvard Business School has recently acquired many of them. These artworks—by Ethiopian, Ghanaian, Namibian, Nigerian, and South African artists represented in the collections at HBS—address an array of timely topics. They raise issues of ancestry and identity; archives and history; memory and trauma; legacies of colonialism and apartheid; globalization and trade; and climate and natural resources.
The works in this exhibition offer another view of the continent, one that also counters clichés. As Ethiopian artist Aïda Muluneh stated in a 2017 Guardian article, "When people think about Africa right now, they often only think about animals, war, and famine. I'm trying to distort that impression to provoke questions in a different sense." Simultaneously speaking to local politics and histories as well as universal themes, the eight works in this online exhibition—by artists Philip Kwame Apagya, William Kentridge, Vivienne Koorland, Tuli Mekondjo, Zanele Muholi, Muluneh, and Yinka Shonibare CBE RA—can encourage questions, foster conversations, and create connections.
For more information about each work in the online exhibition, click on the images below.
Exhibition curated by Melissa Renn, Collections Manager, HBS Art Program & Collections.
Virtual Tour
