Traveling to Warsaw to study a private African art collection reminded me once again that objects never exist in isolation. They live between people, ideas, institutions — and sometimes between different definitions of knowledge itself.
My days there included examining a private collection, discussing objects with scholar Dariusz Skonieczko, and visiting the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw.
What emerged was not simply an evaluation of objects, but a reflection on where African art stands today — between scholarship, connoisseurship, ethics, and changing museum narratives.
Scholarship and connoisseurship — two necessary but different languages
One of the recurring misunderstandings in African art is the idea that scholarship and connoisseurship are interchangeable. They are not.
Scholarship builds context: archives, ethnography, historical research, documentation, and theoretical frameworks. It situates an object within a wider cultural and academic narrative.
Connoisseurship begins elsewhere — in the object itself. It grows from decades of looking, handling, comparing, and sensing the internal logic of carving, surface, proportion, and presence.
Scholarship asks: What does this object mean historically?
Connoisseurship asks: What is this object actually doing in front of me?
Both perspectives are valuable — but they answer different questions. The strongest understanding comes when they are allowed to remain distinct yet in dialogue.
Perhaps the most challenging reality today is that certainty itself has become more complex. The line between historical objects, later traditional production, reinterpretation, and contemporary creation is not always clear-cut. This does not mean that connoisseurship disappears — only that careful looking, humility, and dialogue have become more important than ever.
Geography still shapes collections
Another observation that became clear during my stay concerns a simple historical reality.
Many of the strongest African works entered Europe through countries with colonial histories such as Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom. These historical channels — however complicated and ethically charged — meant that early field-collected material accumulated there first.
Countries without that history, including Poland, developed collections differently and often later, through dealers, secondary markets, or educational initiatives rather than early field acquisition.
This is not a judgment. It is simply the historical trajectory of how objects travelled.
But it does influence what one finds — and how collectors learn to see.
Museums between ethics and knowledge
My visit to the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw also highlighted a broader museum conversation that many institutions across Europe are facing today.
The museum’s permanent exhibition “African Expeditions, Asian Ways” presents nearly 1,300 objects and explicitly reflects on how African and Asian heritage has been represented historically, including through new “interventions” that add contemporary voices and perspectives.
Recent years have pushed institutions toward self-critical reflection — including questions around colonial narratives, representation, and provenance.
This creates a fascinating tension:
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ethics and representation on one side
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object knowledge and historical reference on the other.
Museums today increasingly collaborate with source communities and include contemporary works or voices to nuance older narratives.
The challenge — and it is not an easy one — is maintaining depth of knowledge while reshaping the narrative.
The central question becomes:
When does a museum document living culture, and when does it preserve historical benchmarks that help us understand artistic development over time?
There is no simple answer, but the conversation itself is shaping the future of ethnographic museums.
Collaboration rather than opposition
A meaningful aspect of this visit was the dialogue with PhD Dariusz Skonieczko, whose work focuses on education and public engagement with African art.
Our approaches come from different traditions — academic research and object-based connoisseurship — yet conversations like these are precisely where the field becomes productive. Scholarship expands context; experience with objects grounds it.
In my view, this dialogue is more important than ever if we want future collectors to look carefully, think independently, and remain curious.
A quiet conclusion
Warsaw reminded me of something simple.
African art today lives in a space where narratives are being renegotiated — by museums, by scholars, by collectors, and by the objects themselves.
The real challenge is not choosing between ethics or aesthetics, between scholarship or the eye. The challenge is keeping them in conversation without losing the ability to truly see.
For me, the most rewarding part of these journeys is always the same: staying happy and curious — and allowing the objects to keep surprising us.
I always encourage readers to look carefully and form their own impressions. Images never replace seeing objects in real life, but they can be a starting point for reflection and dialogue.
As always, these reflections represent my personal observations as a connoisseur and dealer, based on direct engagement with objects.
Acknowledgement
I would like to warmly thank Ryszard Stolarski for the invitation to Warsaw, for his generous hospitality, and for supporting the opportunity to study and discuss his African art project in depth. Encounters like these — where collecting, scholarship, and curiosity meet — are always enriching.
Further reading
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Reflections on African representation in Poland: https://obieg.pl/en/180-some-reflections-on-the-representation-of-africa-in-poland
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African gallery educational project (Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/groups/155452167800232/posts/25855424557376307/
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Exhibition at the National Ethnographic Museum: https://ethnomuseum.pl/en/wystawy-lista/african-expeditions-asian-ways/
- The history of the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw https://ethnomuseum.pl/en/museum/about-us/our-history/
David Norden
Happy & Curious
