Saints Talk: Dr Kate Cowcher Art for the people: how African modernist art came to rural Scotland
Join Development colleagues for the next instalment of the Saints Talk series with Dr Kate Cowcher's online session, Art for the people: how African modernist art came to rural Scotland.
Dr Kate Cowcher is Lecturer in Art History at St Andrews. Her teaching and research broadly encompass modern and contemporary art, art from East Africa, and Scotland's historic connections with the African continent. Her first book, Beyond the Feudal Fog: Art and Revolution in Ethiopia, is under contract with McGill-Queens University Press.
Kate holds a PhD from Stanford University, an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MA from the University of Edinburgh. She is Co-Director of the St Andrews Centre for Contemporary Art, and currently leads the Africa-Scotland Art History Heritage Network.
In this talk, Kate will introduce her second book project which charts the history of an overlooked cluster of artworks from Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Kenya and South Africa that were bought for school children in Argyll in the 1960s. The talk will reveal why and how paintings and prints by significant East African artists travelled from Dar es Salaam, Kampala, Nairobi and Lusaka to classrooms in Campbeltown, Dunoon and Lochgilphead in the era of independence.
These artworks were bought for an educational initiative called The Argyll Collection, established to make art available to primary and secondary school children. Kate will share the research journeys and collaborative exchanges with colleagues in Scotland, Uganda and Tanzania that have facilitated the reattribution of Argyll's African artworks. Her talk will also reflect on the future for this pioneering collection.
Following the talk, attendees can ask questions in a live question and answer (Q&A) session.