John Monroe spending year in Iowa City looking at the changes of
French approaches to African arts.
It's been quite a year for John Monroe, assistant professor of history.
First Monroe received a $5000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
summer stipend, which provides individuals with an opportunity to pursue
research in the humanities that contributes to scholarly knowledge or to
the public's understanding of the humanities.
Monroe traveled to Paris last summer to conduct historical research for
a book, analyzing one of the great mass-media hoaxes of all time - a fabricated
"Satanic conspiracy" invented by French anti-Catholic journalist Leo Taxil
in the 1890s.
"Turn-of-the-century France was caught up in a culture war between
leftists and religious conservatives that makes the tensions in contemporary
America seem quite tame," Monroe said. "My research will also
to try to understand the dynamics of this conflict and how it relates to
the rise of extreme right-wing political ideologies during the first half
of the 20th century."
Now back in the U.S. the French historian is working on a new research project
– a history of changing French approaches to African art.
"In about 1905, a major transformation of Western taste began in Paris,"
Monroe said. "Gradually, particular types of African sculpture stopped
being 'anthropological specimens' and became works of what used to be called
'primitive art.' My new project is about how this transformation took place,
what its consequences were."
Monroe's new project will be based on research in dealer archives, auction
catalogues and exhibition reviews.
"Early on, people had trouble paying large sums of money for African sculptures,"
he said. "My new book will tell the story of the years of careful marketing
that changed that situation."
He will look at how dealers and art critics described African sculptures
they perceived were valuable. The roles that photography and anthropology
played will also be investigated.
"The answers to these questions have a lot to tell us about how French
people saw Africa – and themselves – at a time when France exerted colonial
domination over a large part of the continent," Monroe said.
While on leave from his Iowa State position, Monroe is a Curatorial Fellow
at the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA). He is scheduled to be in
residence there until August 2006. While at the University of Iowa, Monroe
has studied the museum's holdings to deepen his general knowledge of African
art.
"The UIMA is a perfect place for me to do this project," he said,
"because it has one of the country's best collections of African sculpture."
He is also supervising a reinstallation of important pieces from the museum's
African collection, scheduled to open in late January, 2006.
"The new installation will explore some of the theoretical concerns
at the heart of my project," he said. "One portion will look at
the ways in which African artists have responded to encounters with different
cultures, and the other will demonstrate how the Western museum context
transforms our perception of these objects."
Monroe's work with African art is unusual given his primary focus as a French
historian. His projects look at French perceptions of African art – both
the aesthetics and broader attitudes toward colonialism and cultural differences.
"When I go into African art galleries in Paris," he says, "the
dealers tend to ask me what 'tribe' I specialize in. They always look a
bit taken aback when I tell them it's the French."
