Bridges to helm Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas Art Museum – St. Louis American

She will shine brighter light on African Art

Nichole N. Bridges has been named the Saint Louis Art Museum Morton D. May Curator of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.

Bridges has served the museum for nearly a decade after joining the institution in 2013 as the associate curator in charge of the Africa, Oceania and the Americas department.

(The museum) has a world-class African Art collection that deserves more attention, Bridges said. And so thats why Im here.

In 2018, she refreshed its presentation of African art - and there is more to come.

The reason I do the work that I do and believe in my work so strongly is that there is really visually stunning, dramatic, beautiful artwork made by African hands, Bridges said.

Bridges recently transformed how visitors experience the museums rich collection of Oceanic art through a significant renovation of a suite of galleries that will reopen this week.

Nichole has made prolific contributions to the museum, said Brent R. Benjamin, the Barbara B. Taylor Director of the Saint Louis Art Museum.

With this years Oceanic installation, she offers our visitors new ways of seeing and thinking about these important aspects of the Art Museums comprehensive collection.

Bridges has curated several museum exhibitions including Currents 109: Nick Cave (2014) and Adorning Self and Space: West African Textiles (2015). She served as in-house curator for the main exhibitions Atua: Sacred Gods from Polynesia (2014) and Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa (2015).

Bridges, an art historian of African art, also guest curated the reinstallation of the Cincinnati Art Museums collection galleries for African art, which reopened in 2016.

When Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa opened at the Saint Louis Art Museum, it was the first African art exhibition there in more than 15 years.

I love museums and I love engaging with all types of audiences through African Art, Bridges told The American in 2015. And I love finding ways to introduce and make a bridge between Africa and our visitors.

She curated her latest effort in collaboration with subject expert Philippe Peltier. It opens at the same time as a special installation of Australian Aboriginal art, co-curated by Bridges and Alexander Brier Marr, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator for Native American Art.

Bridges is a former associate curator at the Newark Museum and head of the Department of the Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific Islands at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

She holds a bachelors degree in fine arts (art history) and French from Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., and a masters degree and doctorate in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Continued here:

Bridges to helm Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas Art Museum - St. Louis American