Monni Adams is an art historian who specializes in African and Indonesian art. When she received her MA at Columbia University in 1963 she was among the earliest scholars to obtain a graduate degree in African art studies. She conducted Fulbright research on Indonesian art in museums of the Netherlands and Switzerland. This research was the focus of her Ph. D dissertation at Columbia in 1967 and published in her first book: System and Meaning in East Sumba Textile Design from Yale University.
Dr. Adams taught art history at Columbia University and MIT from 1972-1974. After a national competition she was chosen for a five-year Associate Professorship of Art and Anthropology at Harvard University and a curatorship at Harvard's Peabody Museum. She taught at Wellesley College from 1978-1983 and at the Harvard Extension School from 1980-1998.
She is currently an Associate Curator in African art and Ethnology at the Peabody Museum, where she focuses on research and publication. She was appointed the first Hrdy Guest Curator at the Peabody Museum (1999-2001) for a major exhibition, “Heads and Tales: Adornments from Africa,” which displayed African head adornments with artifacts that reflect African conceptual life. She was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School to study ritual and religious practice in the forest zone of West Africa (2002-2003).
Dr. Adams has published and lectured extensively on her art research on Sumba, Indonesia and sub-Saharan Africa. Much of her work has focused on visual art, but she has also recorded folklore, music, dance, and ritual. As the result of her field research in the former Kuba kingdom in central Africa, she has published many articles on Kuba textiles and sculpture. She has made important contributions to the field of African art and much of her recent work has focused on the Wè-speaking people of Canton Boo, Côte d’Ivoire. In “Women’s Art as Gender Strategy Among the Wè of Canton Boo” she gives a fascinating account of the use of art to reinforce gender roles in Wè society. She is curating an exhibition for spring of 2009: “Masked Festivals in Canton Bo; Reality as Image.” Her most recent article is the result of long-term research on the Peabody Museum’s collection of northeastern Liberian masks: “Both Sides of the Collecting Encounter,” to be published in the Spring 2009 issue of Museum Anthropology.
References
Adams, Monni
1993 Women’s Art as Gender Strategy Among the Wè of Canton Boo. African Arts 26(4):32-43, 84-85.
Adams, Monni
2008 Curriculum Vitae. Sent by Monni Adams on January 8, 2008.
Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School
2006 Past Fellows and Affiliates: A-C. Electronic document,
http://www.hds.harvard.edu/cswr/people/past/A-C.html, accessed January 9, 2008.
Sanyal, Sunanda K.
2001 Heads and Tales: Adornments from Africa. African Arts 34(4):82-84.
Written By: Melissa Lorentz, 2008