Ngaire Blankenberg, new director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art
Ngaire Blankenberg, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, in Washington.
© Personal archives of Ngaire Blankenberg.
Text by: Sabine Cessou Follow
7 mins
Who is Ngaire Blankenberg, at the head since July 6 of the prestigious Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (NMAfA), in Washington?
This independent consultant, of South African nationality, born in Canada to South African and New Zealand parents, has an impressive career.
Over the past two decades, it has collaborated with 55 museums in more than 40 cities around the world.
Among her most recent collaborations, she cites the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, her hometown, the Geneva Museum of Ethnography (MEG), the Al-Ula Project in Saudi Arabia and the new Museum and Archive of the Constitution at the Hill (MARCH) in Johannesburg.
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A teacher at the International University of Catalonia, based in Barcelona in recent years, Ngaire Blankenberg has co-authored
Of Cities, Museums and Soft Power
(AMM Press, 2015).
This book on the role of museums in the 21st century starts from the observation that “
Paris, for example, does not have the same influence as France, just as Barcelona does not shine like all of Spain.
The museum, tinged with colonialism in Europe and endowed with a particular diplomacy, has been transformed.
Modern museums no longer carry a necessarily national imaginary, but are rather linked to the big cities that house them, the places where the current crises are most felt, be it housing, inequalities, migration and of xenophobia
”.
Transformation in sight at the Smithsonian
Open minded and strong personality, Ngaire Blankenberg says he is “
very honored to work in the new direction that the great public institution that the
Smithsonian
represents
”. with 19 museums and 21 libraries across the United States, not to mention the National Zoo in Washington. Its new director since 2019, the African-American historian Lonnie Bunch, founded the
National Museum of African American History and Culture
in 2005
. Starting from nothing, he built a collection of 40,000 pieces and made the museum a central point of attraction, with 6 million visitors between 2016 and 2019.
“
His perspective on the necessary transformation of museums makes the mission exciting,
” says Ngaire Blankenberg, who has immense respect for him.
She is ready based on these questions: "
What does it mean to be an African art museum in the United States?"
What is the relationship, both local and transnational, between this national museum and its city, Washington, where 55% of the population is made up of African Americans and migrants from the African diaspora?
What is the museum's responsibility towards the continent and the diaspora, whether in the Caribbean, Central America or Europe?
"
From television to museum practice in Johannesburg
Ngaire Blankenberg arrived at this summit as an autodidact, driven by her curiosity and her sense of freedom. Modest, she says she has "
more breadth than depth
" because she does not have the classic path of museum directors - long studies in art history and conservation. When she decided to leave Ottawa to settle in South Africa in 1997, it was to continue her studies in journalism, with a master's degree in Arts, Media and Cultural Studies from the University of Natal.
She makes documentaries and shows in Johannesburg for a production company that offers her a bifurcation, when she wants to change the pace of work, after the birth of her two children.
“
The company won the contract to convert Constitution Hill Prison in Johannesburg into a museum,
” she said.
The project was part of historical heritage, tourism and education.
My team has self-educated, moving from a way of telling stories on television to a way of telling stories in three dimensions.
The aim was for the museum, an instrument of conservation and inclusion, to have an impact in post-apartheid South Africa
”.
A historical and contemporary collection
The NMAfA, in Washington, whose former director Augustus Casely-Hayford, a Briton from Ghana, left in early 2020, is therefore awaiting its new director. It will be installed as soon as the restrictions linked to the Covid allow it, to find a unique collection, both historical and contemporary. The latest acquisitions range from traditional wedding baskets to recent works by visual artist Billie Zangewa from Malawi.
Interested for a long time in decolonization, Ngaire Blankenberg believes that the issues arise differently depending on the regions of the world: “
In Africa, the museums of the post-colony are in a sorry state, while in Europe, there are rather racist colonial institutions, dominated by white leaders with a particular culture and type of dynamic, which must be dismantled
”.
An assiduous reader of Frantz Fanon and Achille Mbembe, she cites among her current readings
Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals
(AK Press, 2020) by the African-American poet and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
A reflection on how marine mammals protect their offspring in the face of climate change, which reminds him of another equally important essay to him,
The Mushroom of the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in the Ruins of Capitalism
(La Discovery, 2017) by Anna Tsing.
Suffice to say that the change to the NMAfA promises to be radical.
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To read also:
Independence, an art carried high by Koyo Kouoh
Who is N'Goné Fall, general commissioner of the Africa 2020 Season?
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