
Rowland O. Abiodun, b. 1941, earned his B.A. in Fine Arts in 1965 from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, and his M.A. in Art History from the University of Toronto. Born in
Owo
Owo is a local government area in Ondo state, Nigeria. Between 1400 and 1600 CE, it was the capital of a Yoruba city-state. The local government area has a population of 222,262 based on 2006 population census.
History
In their oral traditi ...
Nigeria, Abiodun has written extensively about the body of art produced by the
Yoruba
The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba consti ...
people of modern-day
Nigeria and
Benin. Abiodun is the John C. Newton Professor of Art, the History of Art, and Black Studies at
Amherst College
Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...
. He has served as a director of the
African Studies Association.
Abiodun has curated several prominent exhibitions of African art in the United States. His exhibition ''Artist as Explorer: African Art from the Walt Disney-Tishman Collection,'' displayed at the
National Geographic Society's Explorer Hall, debuted two years before the
Smithsonian acquired the Disney-Tishman Collection. The exhibition ''Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought'' which he co-curated with Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton III and Allen Wardwell included art works from
Lagos and
Ife, some of which had not previously been seen in the United States before being displayed at the
Center for African Art
The Africa Center, formerly known as the Museum for African Art and before that as the Center for African Art, is a museum located at Fifth Avenue and 110th Street in East Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, near the northern end of Fifth Avenue ...
and the
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
.
Abiodun's writings on Yoruba Art have shaped the interpretation of African art in the United States, among these his 2014 book, ''Yoruba art and language: seeking the African in African art''. The
Smithsonian National Museum of African Art
The National Museum of African Art is the Smithsonian Institution's African art museum, located on the National Mall of the United States capital. Its collections include 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art from both Sub-S ...
has presented Abiodun's commentary in its ''Visionary: Viewpoints on Africa's Arts'' exhibition.
In 2011 Abiodun received the ACASA Leadership Award, an award for "an individual whose accomplishments best exemplify excellence in the study of African and/or African Diasporic arts and/or whose innovative contributions and vision have advanced the field."
Bibliography
''Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art.'' Cambridge University Press, 2014.
[Abiodun, R. (2014). ''Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107239074]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Abiodun, Rowland
Living people
1941 births
Amherst College faculty
American Africanists
Historians of Yoruba art
21st-century African-American academics
21st-century American academics
People from Owo
American people of Yoruba descent
Yoruba historians
20th-century births
Nigerian emigrants to the United States
Yoruba academics
Ahmadu Bello University alumni
University of Toronto alumni
20th-century African-American academics
20th-century American academics