Aronson to present 2011 Art History Lecture

"Being Green in Africa through Photography and Dress" is the title of the 2011 annual Art History lecture to be presented by Lisa Aronson, associate professor of art history, at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22, in the Payne Room of the Tang Teaching Museum.

Aronson's lecture relates the environmental theme of the recently launched Tang exhibition Environment and Object in Recent African Art to two areas of her research on African art and visual culture. She will look at the work of Nigerian photographer Jonathan Adagogo Green, active between 1890-1905, whose photographs, she argues, played an important role in legitimizing British control of land and resource as the colonizers laid the foundation for Nigeria. She will then explore several ways in which Africans have recently come to use textiles to address issues related to ecology and resource management as they seek to take control of their environment.

Aronson teaches and writes mainly about African art and visual culture. Initially, her scholarship focused on African textiles and trade and on issues of gender in African art. More recently, her interests have turned to contemporary African art and African photography. Her work on the early Nigerian photographer Jonathan Adagogo Green (funded through a Getty Collaborative Research Grant) will lead to a jointly authored book on the subject. She is co-curator with John Weber, Dayton Director of the Tang Msuem, of Environment and Object in Recent African Art.