Raymond Silverman

Raymond Silverman is Professor in the Department of the History of Art and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies. In 2002, he joined the faculty at University of Michigan to launch a new interdisciplinary graduate program in Museum Studies—he stepped down as Director of the program in 2012. Silverman is a historian of the visual cultures of Africa. Most of his research and writing has been undertaken in Ghana and Ethiopia, where he has explored a range of subjects dealing with historical and social dimensions of metallurgy and the visual culture of religion, specifically of Islam and indigenous religions in Ghana, and the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia. His publications include two books dealing with Ethiopian art, Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity (1999) and Painting Ethiopia: The Life and Work of Qes Adamu Tesfaw (2005) as well as articles and essays dealing with a range of topics focused on the arts of Ghana, Ethiopia, museums and heritage. Silverman recently edited a collection of essays, Museum as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledges (2015), presenting new models for community-engaged “culture work” that negotiate the social and political spaces between museums and the communities they represent. He is currently working on a book project, Icons of Devotion, Icons of Trade, dealing with the contemporary visual practices of the Orthodox Church in northern Ethiopia.

Affiliation(s):
Department of the History of Art, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Museum Studies Program

Field(s) of Study:
Visual cultures of Africa, Museum and Heritage Studies