User:Hdrewal

Born and raised in Brooklyn and Hempstead, NY, Henry John Drewal received his BA from Hamilton College majoring in French and minoring in Fine Arts. After graduation he joined the Peace Corps, taught French and English, and organized arts camps in Nigeria. During his two years in Nigeria he apprenticed himself to a Yoruba sculptor – a transformative experience that led him to interdisciplinary studies at Columbia University in African art history and culture, receiving two Masters' degrees and a PhD. He taught at The Cleveland State University (where he was chair of the Art Department), and was a Visiting Professor at the UC-Santa Barbara and SUNY-Purchase. He also served as Curator of African Art at The Cleveland Museum of Art and the Neuberger Museum. Since 1991 he has been the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Art History and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Adjunct Curator of African Art at the Chazen Museum of Art, UW-Madison. He has published several books and edited volumes and many articles on African/African Diaspora arts and curated several major exhibitions, among them: Introspectives: Contemporary Art by Americans and Brazilians of African Descent; Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and thought; Beads, Body, and Soul: Art and Light in the Yoruba Universe; Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas, and most recently Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria exhibited in Santander and Madrid, Spain, the British Museum, and the USA in Houston, TX, Richmond, VA and Indianapolis, IN. In the last several years he has developed the theory and method he terms sensiotics -- the study of the crucial role of the senses in understandings of art and culture.