Center for African Studies

Lecture with John Thornton, Professor of African American Studies and History, Boston University

Dr. Thornton specializes in Africa and Atlantic History and is a co-author of “Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas” (Cambridge University Press, 2007), which won the Melville J. Herskovits Prize that year.

The Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida is working together with the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA Tervuren) to display and travel the first exhibition in the United States to deeply explore the legacy of Kongo culture. Kongo across the Waters, on view from October 22, 2013 through March 23, 2014 will present more than 160 works of historic and contemporary art and artifacts—including loans from the Royal Museum for Central Africa that have never been on display in the United States and several never before exhibited archaeological discoveries—spanning five centuries from the 16th century when Kongo first emerged as a major Atlantic presence, to the present day.