April 22, 2001 – More than 200 internationally recognized authorities on African and African-heritage arts are converging on St. Thomas this week for the kind of gathering they hold only once every three years, and they're doing it in part because it's Carnival time.
The occasion is the 12th triennial Symposium on African and Caribbean Art, sponsored by the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, an organization whose membership consists primarily of college, museum and art gallery scholars. What makes this ACASA symposium of special significance not only to the Virgin Islands participants but to the association as a whole is that, the name notwithstanding, it is the first to be held in the Caribbean – or anywhere other than the U.S. mainland.
By design, the symposium is offering not only learned treatises on Carnival themes but also ample opportunity for participants to make mas for themselves.
Hosted by the University of the Virgin Islands, the conference is taking place at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef Beach Resort. Its theme reflects the choice of location and the fact that this is the first such gathering of the new millennium: "Transitions, Passages and Confluences."
"It is an inclusive theme that encourages the investigation of transformations of the arts of the African continent and the African Disapora," the lead page of the symposium web site states.
UVI Education Division faculty member Robert Nicholls, the author of a book on masquerade in the Virgin Islands, has been the university liaison during the more than two years of planning that has gone into the symposium.
The university finds itself in academically impressive company as an ACASA symposium host. Previous gatherings have taken place at Hampton Institute (now University), Harvard University, Columbia University, New York University, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian and its National Museum of African Art. The most recent one, in 1998, was held at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Carnival connections
The performing arts have a notably prominent place in this symposium, reflecting the Caribbean location and the timing of the event to coincide with the climax of Carnival celebrations on St. Thomas. The keynote speaker for Wednesday evening's opening session is a Caribbean scholar and performing artist familiar to Virgin Islanders – Dr. Hollis Liverpool, also known as the "Mighty Chalkdust."
The five-time Trinidadian calypso monarch, who holds a Ph.D. from Michigan State University, is a retired University of the West Indies professor. He was named last year to serve as the first director of Trinidad and Tobago's new Carnival Institute and is currently a visiting lecturer in history at UVI. He also is the author of a recently released book on carnival in Trinidad and Tobago.
Attendees will travel to the Reichhold Center for the Arts on Friday evening for a program of music, poetry and masquerade that will feature the performance of a scene from Caribbean playwright Edgar Lake's work "The Killing of Arthur Sixteen."
Lake, who spent his childhood in Antigua, has lived for many years on St. Croix, where he works in the Education Department. He says the play about Sixteen, a well-known Antiguan "bull masquerade" figure, "speaks to a lost tradition in these Virgin Islands." The Reichhold presentation was co-produced by St. Thomas artist Afreekan Southwell. St. Croix librarian Wallace Williams conducted an extensive interview with Lake last month that covers the "jambull" masquerade form, the ACASA symposium and the playwright's background. It's posted at PlaywritingLake.
On Saturday, after two hours of panel presentations, participants get to head for Main Street to take in the Adults' Parade. The concluding symposium event will be an awards banquet that evening, with panoramic viewing of the fireworks over St. Thomas harbor built into the program. One of the evening's honorees is the Virgin Islander for whom this year's Carnival Village is named – Dorothy "Dotsy" Elskoe.
Wide-ranging panels and presenters
Most of the symposium sessions – 41 of them – consist of panels of scholars presenting papers describing their research findings on related themes. Five or six panels are in session simultaneously at any given time, and none are repeated. For the most part, content is aimed at an academic audience; however, a number of the presenters are addressing topics that may be of interest to a wider Virgin Islands community. The web site lists all panels, presenters and paper themes (subject to revision).
The presenters are from a wide range of mainland U.S. colleges, universities, museums and other institutions plus such entities in Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Ghana, Guadeloupe, Italy, Jamaica, Kenya, Namibia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Scotland, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Some panel topics that may be of particular local interest:
– Thursday at 8:15 a.m. – "Masks: Transformations, Identities and Adaptability in Contemporary Society."
– Thursday at 2 p.m. – "Aspects of Kaiso (Calypso)."
– Friday at 8:15 a.m. – "Diaspora Carnival and Other Festivals."
-Friday at 10:30 a.m. – "Jonkonnu and Related Performance Arts" (including presentations on aspects of mas celebrations in Barbados, Carriacou and St. Kitts-Nevis).
-Friday at 10:30 a.m. – in a panel on "Current Studies in African Art," a presentation on "Country Music, Country Noise: An Analysis of Country Music and Creolization Processes in the African Diaspora."
-Saturday at 8:15 a.m. – in a panel on "Femmes Fatales: The Politics of Seduction in African and African-Caribbean Art and Performance," a presentation on "Queen of the Virgins: Queen Shows, the Popular Women's Theatre of the U.S. Virgin Islands."
Virgin Islanders' involvement
Among the local presenters:
– Thursday at 8:15 a.m., UVI faculty member Ededet Iniama is chairing a panel on "Beyond Pageantry: Aspects of African and Caribbean Festivals" in which he will present a paper on "St. Thomas Carnival: What the Revelers Do Not See on the Carnival Route."
– Thursday at 10:45 a.m., UVI faculty member Gene Emanuel is chairing a panel on "The Arts of the Rastafari" in which he will present a paper on "Art and the Artists: In Search of Jah's Spirit," and St. Thomas artist Afreekan Southwell will make a presentation on "Rastafarian Art in the Caribbean, its African Continual Connection."
– Thursday at 10:45 a.m., for a panel on "Reconceptualizing African/American Diasporan Exhibits in the 21st Century," Fort Christian Museum staff member Susan Edwards will make a presentation on "The Challenges of Exhibiting Afro-Caribbean Culture in a 330-Year-Old Danish Fort."
– Thursday at 2 pm., for the panel on "Aspects of Kaiso (Calypso)," Lauren Larsen of the V.I. Education Department will present a paper on "Music of Resistance in the Caribbean."
– Thursday at 4:15 p.m., for a panel on "National Identity, Creolization and the Individual in Caribbean Art," V.I. Humanities Council executive director Magda G-Smith will present a paper on "The Art of Albert E. Daniel, Virgin Islands Artist."
– Thursday at 4:15 p.m., UVI faculty member Vincent Cooper will chair a panel on "Creating with Breath and Tongue: Art as Language/Language as Art" in which his UVI colleague Gilbert Sprauve will present a paper on "Virgin Islands Oral He
ritage: Vital Links to the Pan-Caribbean Cultural Engine."
Friday at 10:30 a.m., UVI faculty member Robert Nicholls will chair the panel on "Jonkonnu and Related Performance Arts" in which St. Thomas sociologist Eddie Donoghue will make a presentation on "Montserrat Masqueraders: Cultural Preservation in the Modern World."
Friday at 1:45 p.m., at a panel on "Aspects of African and Diasporan Dance," Dmitri Copeman of the Virgin Islands will make a presentation on "The Creolization of the European Quadrille."
Public access, up to a point
ACASA conferences are not usually open to the public, but this one has 60 seats available daily for Virgin Islanders to attend sessions free of charge. There is no pre-registration, and admittance is on a first-come basis. The first panel presentations begin at 8:15 a.m. Thursday through Saturday, and those wishing to attend are advised to go to Frenchman's Reef before that time, if possible, on the days they would like to attend. If all 60 free slots are taken, additional V.I. residents can attend sessions for the special rate of $50 per day. Most panel presentations are scheduled for two hours, with the last ones ending at 6:15 p.m. on Thursday, 4 p.m. on Friday and 10:15 a.m. on Saturday.
In conjunction with the symposium, UVI sponsored and adjunct art instructor Shira Sofer curated the exhibition of local artwork that has been on display since April 17 in the Grand Galleria complex, in the onetime ballroom of the historic Grand Hotel. The works by 18 Virgin Islands artists, collectively titled "Africa in the HeART of the Virgin Islands," remain open to public viewing through 5 p.m. Thursday. That evening, there will be an ACASA reception at the exhibition. Then the works will be packed for shipment to North Carolina, where the show will open in the fall at the Agricultural and Technical State University's African Heritage Museum.
Some of the visiting ACASA educators will take part in "Outreach Day" activities even before the symposium convenes, conducting four Education Department workshops for teachers on Tuesday. And on Wednesday, in a triennial symposium event known as "Museum Day," a group of museum curators, archivists and historians will attend a daylong workshop on the collecting, preservation and presentation of African art. Professional staff from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art chair the committees for these two days' activities.
For further background on the symposium participants, panels and papers to be presented, see the symposium web site.
