May 8, 1998

African art archives donated to Loyola

Frére Joseph-Aurélien Cornet, one of the foremost experts on the art of the Congo has gifted his archives to Loyola.

Professor Mark Grote, chair of the Department of Visual Arts made the announcement earlier this month at the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) conference in New Orleans. A reception was held on April 9 to thank Brother Cornet for his significant donation.

Cornet’s important scholarship is primarily field work, historical in nature and impossible to replicate. Included in the archives are as many as 150 field notebooks and 20,000 photographs. Cornet’s work is considered one of the most important African visual archives in the world. The collection is as important to Congolese art as the Fagg Collection at the British Museum is to Nigerian art and Gebauer Collection at the Met and Smithsonian is to Cameroonian art.

University President Bernard P. Knoth, S.J., said, “Loyola is honored to become the home of Brother Cornet’s definitive works and looks forward to the opportunities this gift provides our students and the New Orleans community.”

Cornet chose Loyola as the recipient both because of New Orleans’ distinctive heritage as an African city and because he felt that this visual archive would be a great compliment to Tulane’s Amistad Archive and the New Orleans Museum of Art’s Collection of African Art.

At the reception, Cornet said, “It is foreseen that my entire archives will come to Loyola, where it will perhaps be useful to young people who, like me, dream of Africa. It is not necessary to thank me. On the contrary, it is in my heart that thankfulness can be found. All people hope to know that their work will continue after their disappearance.”

Cornet’s archives are a definitive addition to the Loyola Collection, the university’s permanent collection of art. The Loyola Collection, guided by Charles Davis of the Davis Gallery, seeks to emphasize the art scholarship of members of religious orders who were in many cases the first art historians in both the developed and the developing world.

This week Loyola received the first group of field notebooks from Cornet. His work will be housed in the new Visual Arts Center and Gallery located on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Library which is currently under construction. Funding for the Visual Arts Center and Gallery was provided by the Ella West Freeman Foundation, the J. Aron Foundation, and the Zemurray Foundation.