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Looking at the Lookers: The Power of African Art at the Barnes Foundation 

Portraits of Damilare Kuku's inspiration for her hit novel displayed in an art gallery.
An art gallery featuring portraits of the real-life inspiration behind Damilare Kuku's novel 'Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad.'.

To celebrate the museum’s centenary, the Barnes Foundation commissioned artist Isaac Julien to create a film installation, a great portion of which involves looking at people looking at the museum’s African art collection. Through the use of multiple screens, the artist creates an immersive experience that emphasizes the power of the collection and provides insight into the collector, Albert Barnes, and a prominent intellectual and author, Alain Locke, who was also known as the Dean of the Harlem Renaissance. “Once Again” was shot in various museum spaces, including the Barnes, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England, an archeological museum containing tens of thousands of pieces of African art and artifacts, some of which were acquired through British colonization.

SOURCE: WHYY

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