IN PERSON

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Erica P. Jones, co-curator of Belongings: Shifting Hands and Changing Meanings in African Arts, will lead a gallery walkthrough tracing the journeys of African artworks across continents, collections, and generations. Through close looking and discussion, participants will explore how these objects have acquired new meanings over time and consider the forces from colonial histories to contemporary museum practices that shape the stories they tell today. Together, we’ll examine questions of ownership, interpretation, and cultural memory, uncovering alternative perspectives on the lives of these remarkable works.

Erica P. Jones is the senior curator of African arts and manager of curatorial affairs at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Her curatorial work has engaged such themes as the legacy of colonialism in Africa, historical royal arts, and resonances between Africa and its diasporas. Exhibitions she has curated or co-curated include: The House Was Too Small: Yoruba Sacred Arts from Africa and Beyond (2023); Inheritance: Recent Video Art from Africa (2019); On Display in the Walled City: The Nigerian Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition 1924–1925 (2019); and Meleko Mokgosi: Bread, Butter, and Power (2018).

Jones is on the board of African Arts journal; serves as a co-chair of the steering committee for the Collaboration, Collections, and Restitution Best Practices Working Group; and in 2024, led the Fowler Museum’s repatriation of seven looted objects to the Asante Kingdom in Ghana. Her publishing has been concentrated on colonial-era collecting, provenance, and the arts and museums of the Cameroon Grassfields. Jones holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in art history from UCLA and a B.A. in art history and anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.