BLACK BLOGGAH

It's time to get your dome tuned by a Black teacher man. Yes, you need to know something about African Art and Professor Olu Oguibe has created an internet based course that will bring you up to speed on the arts of Black Folk in African and throughout the diaspora. Start getting educated by checking out The OLU OGUIBE ART HISTORY CLASS



Just in case you don't believe me when I say brother Oquibe is a serious art head check out his bio - but don't get scared.

"Olu Oguibe is associate director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut and associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History where he teaches studio and art theory. He graduated summa cum laude and valedictorian at the University of Nigeria in 1986, and received his PH.D. in the history of contemporary art from the University of London in 1992. Since then he has taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and Goldsmiths College, both of the University of London, as well as the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of South Florida where he held the Stuart Golding Endowed Chair in African art. His last position was as a senior fellow of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, New York. Oguibe has published several books and articles on art, among them Uzo Egonu: An African Artist in the West (1995), and the edited volumes Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace (1999) and Authentic/ Ex-Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art (2000). His contributions have also appeared in key volumes such as the Dictionary of Art, Art History and its Methods, The Visual Culture Reader, The Third Text Reader on Art, Culture and Theory, and Black British Culture: A Reader. In addition he has organized art exhibitions for major museums and galleries including the Tate Gallery of Modern Art, London and the municipal museum of Mexico City. His own art has also been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Oguibe's many awards include a senior fellowship of the Rockefeller Study and Conference Center in Bellagio (1999) and the Christopher Okigbo All-Africa Prize for Literature (1992). His most recent book is The Culture Game (University of Minnesota Press, 2003.)"

Has aunt Jemima made a comeback, or are Americans just more comfortable laughing at the antics of large and boisterous Black women? An article in today business section of The New York Times looks at the return of a familiar stereotype in American commercials: the "boisterous, overbearing, controlling and extremely agressive" and need I mention -- large -- Black woman. Is it racist stereotyping, purveyed by white ad hacks or some sort of equal opportunity fun-making that brings us all together? I'm not sure that's the right question or that any questions were answered by the article in the times. But, it's good to know that someone is keeping watch to make sure Aunt Jemimah doesn't quietly slip off her pearls and lace collar, stealthily don her doo-rag and apron and slip right back onto the tube - while we all chortle and snicker...maybe she already has.

An Image Popular in Films Raises Some Eyebrows in Ads
By JEREMY W. PETERS
NYT: August 1, 2006