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As part of an ongoing series focused on Belongings: Shifting Hands and Changing Meanings in African Arts, Erica P. Jones will invite participants to explore the complex histories of African objects and reflect on colonial legacies, museum storytelling, and alternative perspectives that reshape how we interpret these works.

Erica P. Jones is the senior curator of African arts and manager of curatorial affairs at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Her 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.