Amanda M. Maples is the Curator of African Art at the North Carolina Museum of Art and a Guest Curator at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. She received her PhD in Visual Studies from UC Santa Cruz in 2018.
African visual culture; Urban masquerade; Transatlantic dialogue; Decolonizing museum spaces; Museum representations of Africa and the arts of Africa; Sierra Leone; African performative arts; Senegalese gold jewelry; African colonial postcards
North Carolina Museum of Art
2110 Blue Ridge Rd
Raleigh, NC 27607
“Gold Jewelry, Women, and Ensemble in Senegal,” Peace, Power and Prestige: African Metalwork, Harn Museum of Art. (forthcoming, 2019)
Good as Gold: Fashioning Senegalese Women. Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. (forthcoming, 2018)
“Unraveling Political and Historical Threads: Youth and Masquerade Mobility in Freetown,” Social Dynamics. (forthcoming, 2018)
“Urban Roots and Rural Routes: Migrating Masquerades of Freetown and Beyond,” Critical Interventions. (forthcoming, 2018)
Ancestors, Cannon Publications, New Hampshire. (contributing author, 2016)
“Re-Inscribing the Museum Text: Examining Fixity and Ambivalence in African Arts Labels,” NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art. (submitted 2017)
Refined Eye, Passionate Heart: African Art from the Leslie Sacks Collection, Leslie Sacks Fine Art, Skira Publishing. (editor and contributor, 2014)
Transformations: The African Art of Change, Tennessee State Museum. (contributing editor, July 2012)
Accumulating Histories: African Art from the Charles B. Benenson Collection at the Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. (co-author, 2012)
PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCES, SEMINARS, & SYMPOSIUM PAPERS
“Sanse and Self-Fashioning: Gold Jewelry, Women and Ensemble in Urban Senegal.” ACASA 17th Triennial Symposium on African Art, University of Ghana, Accra, August 8-13, 2017.
“Urban Roots and Rural Routes: Migrating Masquerades of Freetown and Beyond.” Urban Africa-Urban Africans: New Encounters of the Rural and the Urban, 7th European Conference on African Studies, Basel, Switzerland, June 29-July 1, 2017.
“New Directions in the Arts of Africa: City-Life, Youth Masquerades and Decolonizing ‘Tradition.’” New Directions in African and African-American Studies, University of Rochester, invitation only, fully funded, April 19-21, 2017.
“Inclusion/Exclusion: Mobilizing Youth Masquerades from the Margins of Freetown,” Re-Imagining the African City: The Arts and Urban Politics, University of Basel, March 11–12, 2016
“Reinscribing the Museum Text: Examining Fixity and Ambivalence in African Arts Labels,” University of Basel seminar, March 9, 2016.
“Reinscribing the Museum Text: Examining Fixity and Ambivalence in African Arts Labels,” African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, December 2016.
EXHIBITIONS
“Good as Gold: Fashioning Senegalese Women”
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, October, 24, 2018-September 29, 2019
possibly traveling to Cantor Arts Center, Stanford Univerisity, Palo Alto, CA
“In Dialogue: African Arts”
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, September 2017-ongoing
“Head to Toe: The Language of Plateau Indian Clothing”
High Desert Museum, Bend, OR, January 19-May 18, 2013
traveled to and Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, November 2013
“STUFF! Quirky Curiosities and Fascinating Finds”
High Desert Museum, Bend, OR, December 11, 2011-January 2012
“Portraits of India: Markets, Merchants and Artisans"
co-curated with Ira Jacknis
Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, January 26-December 22, 2006.
“Modern Relics”
Mama Buzz Café, Oakland Art Murmur, Oakland, CA, December, 2006
History of African art, dismantling binaries that separate contemporary from tradition-based African arts, urban arts, urban masquerade, curatorial practice, history of photography in Africa, representations of non-Western art
- Arts Council for the African Studies Association (ACASA) Travel Grant, 2017
- UCSC Regents Fellowship, 2017
- UCSC Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence, 2015-2017
- UCSC Visual Studies Travel Grant, 2014-2017
- University of Kent Overseas Scholarship, 2003-2004
- National Society of Collegiate Scholars, 2001
- Sunshine Lady Foundation Academic Scholarship, 1997-2001
- Who’s Who in American College Students, 1997-2001
- Aid Association for Lutherans Academic Scholarship, 1997-2001
- North Carolina Renaissance Scholar, 1995
- Tandy Technology Scholar, 1995
- US Achievement Academy National Award