Away from Africa

A new cultural institution is being created in New York City: the Africa Center, at the northern tip of Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue. Originally, New York had the Museum for African Art; its first location was in Soho. In 2007, Mayor Bloomberg announced a plan to relocate the museum to Museum Mile at 110th Street in Manhattan; during construction, the museum was moved to Long Island City in Queens. For several years, information about the new venue was scarce. Susan Mullin Vogel founded the Museum for African Art in 1984. The institution showed very high-caliber exhibitions, including exhibitions that were shown in various museums around the United States; it had a wonderful museum store (managed for some years by Vickie Fremont , whom we have also written about in this blog); my spouse, Epee Ellong , had participated in events about African culture and design. The project for the space at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue was enormously ambitious. In October 2012, Phil Conte joined...

Vickie Frémont Vickie Frémont has been designing and creating since she was 8 years old, drawing and painting without having ever been taught. At the age of 12 she began to sew, making dolls for her little sister. She was rather shy and spent most of her time as a child alone, reading, writing or knitting, beading… Vickie was born in Cameroon, but left at an early age. With her parents, she lived in Morocco, and many years in the Ivory Coast and in France. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree, in France, and planned to teach Spanish. She also studied anthropology and economics. However, at one point she was working in the neighborhood of the Necklaces Beaux Arts (fine arts) school and started studying Arts techniques, realizing that there was her calling. She operated a knit textile company for several years, employing 10 people, creating knit designs for such well-known brands as Georges Picaud, Anny Blatt, Pingouin, Phildar, Sonia Rykiel, Torrente, Dorothée Bis, Daniel Hetc...

November 2014: Mr. Jerome Vogel passed away peacefully on September 10, 2014, of an apparent heart attack. May he rest in peace. The below post was originally published July 25, 2014. Jerry Vogel was getting ready to leave for  Mali , to take a group of students from all over the  United States  on a tour. He’s been traveling throughout Sub-Saharan Africa since the 1960s. Having arrived for the first time in  Cameroon  fifteen years later, I was eager to hear of his impressions from those post-independence years. Above: to the right, a Cameroonian Calebasse Jerry Vogel is a born and bred New Yorker: he lived in the Bronx , until he left for Hamilton College . He received a Fulbright Scholarship to study for a year in France . After completing graduate studies in English Literature, he taught at Georgetown University for five years, when he applied for a teaching position at the university in Abidjan , Ivory Coast . At that point he knew not...