New York, New York – Trinidadian born art and museum scholar Dr. Daniela Fifi will shortly embark on an international tour to promote her new publication, Critical Issues in Caribbean Museums.
Art and museum scholar Dr. Daniela Fifi. (Photo credit: Sure Thing Productions)The tour will launch on Tuesday May 27 at Western Washington University in Seattle and will include additional locations throughout the USA as well as the Caribbean and the United Kingdom through the fall of this year.
Critical Issues in Caribbean Museums was released in April by Routledge Press, a leading publication house in academic humanities, and is one of the first books they have ever published on the subject of Caribbean museology. It examines issues around how the Caribbean museum sector, as a unique cultural entity, can better serve its publics through pushing boundaries, sharing best practices in the challenges they face, re-creating conversations around Caribbean cultural and social histories and remaining vital and relevant in today’s evolving societies.
According to Fifi- a former winner of the President’s Scholar Award from the Pratt Institute and the Samuel H. Kress Interpretive Fellowship Award from Columbia University- the book is a labor of love which was inspired by her commitment to the Caribbean, not as a geographical space, but a cultural one.
“The book reflects the aspirations of a collective vision from museum professionals across the Caribbean on the full capacity to which Caribbean cultural institutions can positively impact the lives and knowledge of the people they are meant to serve,” she says. “It is intended for anyone who loves culture, museums and the arts and may hold a particular interest for researchers, professors, graduate students in culture and heritage, as well as museum professionals.”
Despite the book’s title, Fifi is quick to point out that rather than being a critique of the Caribbean museum sector in any way, the focus instead is on critical analysis of factors that can support the sector’s innovation, creativity and growth.
“Criticality, within any discipline, is an interrogation into vital aspects of a field for evaluating and resolving biases in a structured way,” she says. “Through the analysis exemplified in Critical Issues in Caribbean Museums, those of us in the field can consider alternative modalities of engagement, evaluate and improve best practice, and anticipate potential future consequences.”
Fifi authored and co-authored four chapters of the book with leading museum professionals in the Caribbean region. Her authored chapter focuses on the development of formal education and museum education, which is her area of expertise. Other chapters relate to curatorial conversations on Caribbean art.
She adds that “This is the first book I have ever edited with a series of co-authors and ultimately, my skills of collaboration were tremendously bolstered during this process.”
Daniele Fifi discovered her passion for art as a teenager growing up in her native Trinidad and Tobago. Classes in painting, photography and pottery precipitated a move to art school at New York’s Pratt Institute where she graduated with a BFA in Communication Design before transitioning to Art and Museum Studies. She holds a Master's in Art Gallery and Museum Studies from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and a doctorate in Art and Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Viewfinder, an E-Journal of the National Art Education Association, and a global independent consultant.
Dr. Fifi is also in preparation for her next project, The Mind Of The Museum, which will be a multi disciplinary extension of her current book. Utilizing lectures, podcasts and international art exhibitions, the project will address the challenges and victories that Caribbean museums face emerging from post colonial independence into new forms of self–actualization.
Following its launch in Seattle on May 27, the book tour for Critical Issues in Caribbean Museums moves on to A House For Artists in London in July, The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California in August, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in September and the Barbados Museum and Historical Society in Bridgetown, Barbados in October.
Other tour dates and venues are pending and will be announced in due course.
Critical Issues in Caribbean Museums is available at https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Issues-in-Caribbean-Museums/Fifi/p/book/9781032493121
