ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A book, like a power association object, results from exchanges of knowledge and pursuits of resources through diverse, interpersonal networks.

Support for the research presented in this book and the writing of the manuscript came from the Fowler Museum, African Studies Center, and Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles; the United States Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program; the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the City College of New York, City University of New York, and Research Foundation of the City University of New York; the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England; the Art History Department, Center for Faculty Development and Excellence, College of Arts and Sciences, Digital Publishing in the Humanities, Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, and Institute of African Studies as well as the TOME@Emory initiative at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia; and the Stanford Humanities Center in Stanford, California. Conversations with other fellows and graduate students while I was a Mellon Network Fellow at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and a Core Program Fellow at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, inspired some of the thinking that informed the final stages of the manuscript’s revision.

At various moments in the writing process, I delivered lectures or other presentations related to this book at Brooklyn College, Columbia University, Indiana University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac, Oberlin College, Princeton University Art Museum, Reed College, Stanford University, Universität Basel, University of East Anglia, University of Oregon, Wellesley College, Williams College, and Yale University. Presentations that I gave at conferences, including the 2014 and 2021 Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) conferences, 2014 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, 2016 ICOM-CC Conservation Science and Education conference, 2016 African Studies Association conference, 2017 European Conference on African Studies, and 2018 African Studies Association UK conference, featured material that appears in this book. I am thankful to the people who made the lectures possible as well as the conference and session organizers and participants who created fora for scholarly exchange. The opportunities to see familiar faces, meet new people, share works in progress, exchange ideas, and receive feedback enriched the writing process. In addition, colleagues and graduate students at my home institution generously responded to early drafts of the book’s fourth and fifth chapters when I circulated the work as part of Emory University’s Institute of African Studies Seminar in January 2015 and September 2017, respectively. My 2014 ACASA presentation served as the basis for the book’s fourth chapter, and Africa: Journal of the International African Institute published an earlier version of the same chapter in 2018. I thank David Pratten and the anonymous reviewers of the article manuscript for their constructive comments.

I appreciate the encouragement and input that a variety of people offered to me at different stages. Their names are too many to list them all. Chris Higa deserves extra special mention for his unflagging support and consistent patience throughout the process, from my first efforts to define a research topic on power associations and their arts to the final formatting and submission of the manuscript. My sisters Ann and Jane, my mom Marcia, and my dad Peter have also supported my being, my intellectual growth, and this project in innumerable ways. For their comments and insights at different junctures, I thank undergraduate and graduate students who explored themes in this book with me through courses I taught at the City College of New York and at Emory University. For their energy and thoughts as I researched or wrote or for their specific comments in response to particular sections of the text, my thanks goes to many people, including but not limited to Tavy Aherne, Cynthia Akuetteh, Gassia Armenian, Fran Baas, Lamissa Bangali, Tahirou Barry, Tom Bassett, Gaëlle Beaujean, Janet Beizer, Marla Berns, Yaëlle Biro, Steven Black, Erin Bonning, Daniel Bosch, Anne-Marie Bouttiaux, Sarah Brett-Smith, Emily Burrill, C. Jean Campbell, Laure Carbonnel, Étienne Carton de Grammont, Adriana Chira, Jean-Paul Colleyn, Susan Elizabeth Cooksey, Clifton Crais, Rich Darr, Brittany Dolph Dinneen, Kate Ezra, Jean-Noël Ferragut, Rebecca Fenton, Judith Forshaw, Till Förster, Barbara Frank, Rachel Gabara, Aurélien Gaborit, Guy Geltner, Aubrey Graham, Leslie Gray, Bony Guiblehon, Cory Gundlach, Nanina Guyer, Lucas Hafner, Sten Hagberg, John Hanson, Amanda Hellman, Barbara Hoffman, Jennifer Holst, Lisa Homann, Steven Hooper, Ellen Howe, Jen Hsieh, Jean-Michel Humeau, Manuela Husemann, Dilek Huseyinzadegan, Jeanine Jackson, Mark Jackson, Éric Jolly, Hélène Joubert, Candace Keller, Cecelia Klein, Kassim Koné, Nara Koné, Melanie Kowalski, Cory Kratz, Alisa LaGamma, Lisa Lee, Mariane Lemaire, Sarah Lindberg, Diada Lompo, John Mack, Lisa Macklin, Kristin Mann, Alice Matthews, Sarah McKee, Sarah McPhee, Patrick McNaughton, Joseph Moore, Steven Nelson, Toussaint Nothias, Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, Karla Oeler, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Daniel Ollivier, Syna Ouattara, Tiona Ferdinand Ouattara, Elizabeth Pastan, Agnès Pataux, Diane Pelrine, Constantine Petridis, Kristin Phillips, Robert Proctor, Brett Pyper, Matt Rarey, Ciraj Rassool, Daniel Reed, Jesse Ribot, Al Roberts, Polly Roberts, Aileen Kaye Robinson, Jenny Romero, Victoria Rovine, Aboubakar Sanogo, Kirsten Scheid, Pamela Scully, Kristen Sebastian, Scott Sebastian, Mark Addison Smith, Colleen Snyder, Carol Spindel, Renée Stein, Janet Stephens, Zoë Strother, Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, Cybele Tom, Ibrahim Traoré Banakourou, Katie Van Heest, Sam Vangheluwe, Anja Veirman, Subha Xavier, InHae Yap, Roslyn Walker, Calvin Warren, John Thabiti Willis, and anonymous reviewers. Thanks to Becky Baldwin, Steve Bransford, Haley Jones, Chris Sawula, the Emory Art History Visual Resources Library, and the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship as well as Blanche Barnett in the Emory Art History Department for assisting with images, permissions, and payments. Huge thanks to Caitlin Glosser, who patiently resolved the final image permissions, carefully reviewed the gathered images, and competently provided alt-text in the very last stages of manuscript preparation, a period prolonged due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks, too, to Kim Collins, Melissa Hackman, Phil MacLeod, James Steffen, Jenny Vitti, and other staff at Emory Libraries for helping me track down sources at all stages of my writing, including during the viral pandemic. And thanks to Carl Kubilus and Andres LeRoux at Emory and Stanford, respectively, for ensuring that I always had a working computer and secure files. I also thank Sira Cissé and Clément Coulibaly for conversations with me about Souleymane Cissé and Yeelen.

The contents of this book draw on the research I conducted to write my PhD dissertation, and I remain ever thankful to the many people who, in one way or another, facilitated that initial endeavor as well as to the entities that provided support for the work. Many of their names appear in my dissertation, and I reiterate my thanks to each of them. Here I especially want to acknowledge my research collaborator, Dahaba Ouattara, and power association leader Karfa Coulibaly for their generosity since our first meetings. I also thank my dissertation committee chair Steven Nelson for the examples he set and important lessons he taught me. I thank Polly and Al Roberts for the many conversations about my work we had, often in their living room. I feel the loss of Polly deeply and regret that I will not be able to share this book with her. My dissertation advisor, Zoë Strother, carefully mentored me through the PhD program, from our first meeting in London before I decided to study at UCLA until I deposited my dissertation in the university library. She has continued to foster my personal and professional development. I never could have dreamed of all I would learn from her.

Research for this book brought me to archives, libraries, and museums on three continents. The names of many of the institutions I visited as part of this research appear throughout the text. It is impossible for me to name all of the people at each institution who made it possible for me to access historical documents, objects in museums’ collections, or museum records. Given the various ways in which things end up in institutions and the different ways institutions work, I imagine I never even met some of the people who were critical to my access. But I remain thankful for each person’s efforts to make documents and objects available for study, and I appreciate the warm welcomes I received throughout my travels.

When I was growing up in a small town in central Massachusetts, I spent hours in the offices and production rooms of the local newspaper. I watched my mother physically cut and paste text and images to lay out issues of the local high school newspaper and annual yearbook. She reviewed hard copies before approving layouts for publication. Computers changed how my mother edited and produced publications by the time she opened her own publishing house. Still, I observed the intense labor involved in transforming an author’s collection of words into a published book. A university press is much larger than my mother’s publishing house, and it employs many more people. I can only begin to imagine the many people who dedicated their time and energies to producing this book, as I have only had direct contact with some of them. I remain grateful for the contributions of each member of Indiana University Press’s team. Big thanks to Dee Mortensen, my first point of contact at the press, and to the other people with whom I have worked, including Ashante Thomas, Gary Dunham, Anna Francis, and Darja Malcolm-Clarke. Thanks, too, to Vickrutha Sudharsan and Eileen Allen for their assistance with copyediting and indexing.

More than anything else, my study of power associations and their arts has depended on the patience, kindness, and hospitality of power association leaders and many other people in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mali. To each person in this three-corner region who has shared knowledge with me, offered friendship, hosted me, or assisted me in other ways, thank you. Many but not all of their names appear within the pages that follow. My biggest thanks and appreciation go to Dahaba Ouattara and Massoun Traoré for welcoming me into their families, exchanging ideas with me, ensuring my well-being, and otherwise contributing to my research endeavors. Faala, faala.