Transformed from the Inside Out: A Review of Joanna Grabski’s Art World City

Abstract

Dak’Art, Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain, is built from within, not without, argues Joanna Grabski in Art World City: The Creative Economy of Artists and Urban Life in Dakar. The Dak’Art Biennale reflects the artists, the urban context in which they create, and art-world globalization. From this artistic activity, the art world is structured, even if an infrastructure of museums, auction houses, and gallery spaces is not readily apparent to visitors to Dakar. Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, supported the arts during his presidency, from 1960 to 1980, but state-supported institutions of arts and culture and their collections declined soon after, in the period of economic stagnation ushered in by economic liberalization. Institutions such as the library and museum of the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, the Théâtre National Daniel Sorano, the Manufacture Nationale de Tapisserie, the Musée Dynamique, the École Nationale des Beaux Arts, and the École Normale Supérieure d’Éducation Artistique struggled without state support. And yet today, Dakar is a thriving center for the visual and performing arts, as well as for literature and fashion. How this has come to be is the story that Art World City tells.