Canon: A Mini-Symposium | Rethinking the Canon: African Collectors and the Canon of African Art

Canon: A Mini Symposium was held at the de Young Museum on February 7, 2013. Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, PhD, Associate Professor of Art History, UC Santa Barbara, and Founder, Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture. Dr. Ogbechie is a specialist in the arts and visual culture of Africa and its diasporas. He is the author of Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist and Making History: The Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection, and editor of Artists of Nigeria. He is also the director of the cultural brokerage firm Aachron Knowledge Systems. Ogbechie has received fellowships, grants, and awards for his work from many prestigious institutions, including the Getty Research Institute, the American Academy in Berlin, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute for International Education, the Smithsonian Institution and the Ford Foundation. His current project focuses on the politics of cultural patrimony debates as it affects demands for the repatriation of African cultural objects held in Western collections. He received his BA and MA from the University of Nigeria and his PhD from Northwestern University.