I’ve been on Twitter for over a year now (find me here), so I thought it was time for a little evaluation and overview of what it offers concerning African art related news. To be honest, the Twitter community tweeting about African art is still fairly small. Except for Julien Flak from Galerie Flak and Jacaranda Tribal, no galleries are really active on Twitter. It is especially the museum world that is active: the National Museum of African Art post various bits about their activities and collection; Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum is very active; as are Musée du quai Branly, the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Musée Dapper, and the new Museum of World Cultures in Barcelona. Tweets range from exhibition news, special events and special objects from their holdings. Three accounts of curators are worth to follow: Brooklyn Museum’s associate curator for African and Pacific art, Kevin D. Dumouchelle, and his curatorial assistant Roger D. Arnold, are both frequently tweeting about African Art, and across the East River, Yaëlle Biro tweets about her life as associate curator of African art at the Metropolitan. Two private accounts are worth to follow: Laurent Garnier’s Perles du quaialmost daily highlights objects from the quai Branly museum and Meg Lambert, a PhD candidate and blogger on the illicit antiquities trade (with particular focus on West Africa) often posts very interesting stories. Lastly, Imo Dara, like me, mainly posts her recent blog activity. I must admit that the most interesting twitter accounts I have been following the last years were in other fields (like from astronauts in the ISS or cultural heritage law specialists), where this hyper-speed medium works very well. The full potential it has within the world of African art has yet to fully develop; one of its strength is definitely its speed and the ease to get in contact with someone: it’s a very open and friendly community out there.
UPDATE: Tribal Art Magazine now also is on Twitter here!