Drs. Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts are co-curators
and principal authors for Passport to Paradise. Mary (better
known as Polly) is an Africanist art historian and Chief Curator
at UCLA's Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Allen, an Africanist
anthropologist, is Professor in UCLA's Department of World Arts
and Cultures. The Robertses have long experience in Africa and
have written and curated a number of books and exhibitions, both
separately and together. Their Memory: Luba Art and the Making
of History (1996) won the College Art Association's coveted
Alfred Barr Award for Museum Scholarship, as the first Africanist
book to be so honored. To develop the Passport to Paradise
exhibition program, the Robertses' have made more than a dozen
research trips to Senegal since 1994 through generous funding
from the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research, the University of Iowa, and UCLA. Doran H. Ross, Director
of UCLA's Fowler Museum of Cultural History, brings his own research
in Senegal and many years of museum-oriented African art history
to the project. The Passport to Paradise exhibition program
has received encouragement from His Excellency Yellimane Kane,
Senegalese Minister of Culture (1998), and from Serigne Saliou
Mbacké, General Caliph of the Mourides (1995, 1997). A great many
Senegalese friends have offered warm hospitality and wise guidance
to the project, and especially Ousmane Gueye, research associate
to Passport to Paradise, and close friends Djiko Camara
and Mapathé Kane. Celebrated scholars from Senegal, France, England,
Canada, and the United States are consultants to Passport to
Paradise and contributors to the book to accompany the traveling
exhibition. Information about the exhibition and book will be
forthcoming as the 2002 opening approaches.
