WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonians
National Museum of African Art will release the catalog to its landmark, award-winning, multi-platform project Heroes: Principles of African Greatness Sept. 3. Initiated and led by curator Kevin D. Dumouchelle, the Heroes project has grown from an in-person exhibition built of more than 50 art works from the museums collection, which ran from 2019 to 2022, to an ongoing multimedia digital experience featuring videos, an interactive tour, a curated playlist and finally, a book published by Hirmer Publishers and jointly distributed by the University of Chicago Press. The book, authored by Dumouchelle, will be available in bookstores worldwide and is currently available to pre-order.
Heroes gives readers an opportunity to imagine a new future inspired by the visions and lives, the triumphs and the tragedies, of Africas arts and history, Dumouchelle said. Building from the creative genius of the African artists featured in the project, Heroes encourages all who engage with it to explore how its art works narrate stories connected to African history while also inspiring connections to their own lives and experiences.
The project is built around the core principles of heroic achievementfrom strength and valor to assertions of dignity, resistance, pride and collective actionillustrated by a given artist. Artworks range from larger-than-life sculptures by artists such as Senegals Ousmane Sow to 12th-century ceramic figures from Mali to miniature copper-alloy figures and books and photos from the museums library and archival collections. The featured principle serves as a bridge to introducing a figure in African historyfrom well-known political leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah to less widely celebrated individuals, such as Nigerian womens rights and anti-colonial campaigner Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti or South African LGBTQ+ rights activists Beverly Palesa Ditsie and Simon Nkoli. Readers are introduced to each figure with key facts from their lives and statements in their own words, while videos and a fully integrated playlist, available in the projects accompanying digital platforms, enrich and expand the opportunity for empathetic engagement.
Among the heroes in history featured in this project is Nigerian authorial legend Chinua Achebe, who held that If you do not like someones story, write your own, Dumouchelle said. Living in a moment in which it is still often difficult to like many of the narratives circulating in the West about Africa, I was inspired to share the stories revealed by the artists in our collection with our visitors so that they can experience the continents artistic genius and rich, important history in terms that are identifiable with their own experiences. Designed to meet a reader at their own level of interestwhether through big abstract ideas, intimate stories of personal achievement, close examinations of artistic imagination and excellence or via extra-sensory audio and digital interactionI hope that the book may inspire future artists, storytellers and, indeed, potential heroes in the years to come.
Designed in a bright, colorful and accessible graphic-novel style, the book is open-ended in layout and framed as an invitation to choose your own adventure. In addition to being the first collection-focused catalog from the museum in more than 15 years, Heroes is also the first book to apply the National Museum of African Arts field-leading exhibition practice of inviting connections between works by African artists across the full spectrum of time, media and geographies represented in the museums collections. The book is accompanied by a series of digital entry points, including a full exhibition website, a set of seven curated Google Arts & Culture interactive exhibitions (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 ), as well as a playlist available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music of its connected songs.
As part of the museums longstanding commitment to and collaboration with institutions of higher learning on the continent, more than 100 copies of the catalog will be donated to universities and art institutions across Africa.
The museum could not be prouder that we will have the opportunity to share this critically acclaimed platform for connecting readers to not only key figures in Africas arts and history but also to new possibilities within themselves with educators and students across the continent, said John Lapiana, interim director of the National Museum of African Art. It is another demonstration of this museums longstanding commitment to building a space centering African creative achievement and voices, and of its enduring partnerships across the continent.