Curator Talk: Archival Research and Exhibition Development

Join curator Uche Okpa-Iroha, the 2026 Block Museum Curatorial Graduate Fellow and Art History doctoral student, for an interactive conversation on how making use of research library collections (in this case the Herskovits Library of African Studies) can expand and enrich exhibition-making. Drawing from the development of Beneath the Surface: Labor and Consumerism, co-curated with Academic Curator Corinne Granof, this talk offers an inside look at the questions, materials, and choices that shaped the exhibition and reveals how archives and visual culture come together to illuminate the connections between leisure, labor, and exploitation.

Participation level – light, participants may choose to share thoughts and questions during the gallery talk.

Programs are open to all, on a first-come first-served basis. RSVPs are not required, but are appreciated.

About the Speaker:

Uche Okpa-Iroha is the 2026 Block Museum Curatorial Graduate Fellow and an Art History doctoral student at Northwestern University. Presently, he is exploring photographic archives in Nigeria as part of new research investigating these archives as sites of silence, memory, and history, and how these materials hold valuable information for shaping new historical discourse in contemporary times. Okpa-Iroha is the Founder and Director of Lagos-based informal photography school, The Nlele Institute. He is a founding member of the Nigerian photography group the Blackbox Photography Collective and of the Invisible Borders Trans-African photography travel group. Twice has won the Grand Prix Seydou Keita Award for the best photography creation with the “Under Bridge Life” (2009) and “the Plantation Boy” (2015). He also received the Jean Paul Blachere prize in 2009 and the Callanan Excellence in Teaching Award by Center Santa Fe, New Mexico USA in 2022. Okpa-Iroha is an alumnus of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2011- 2012). He co-founded the photography and video art night of projections – FOTOPARTY Lagos and the Lagos Portfolio Review. Okpa-Iroha is also the founder of Lagos Open Range Exhibition Project.

Image credit: Sammy Baloji (Congolaise, born 1978), Raccord #1: Cite de Kawama, 2012, printed 2025, inkjet print, photograph. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Block Collection Council Fund purchase. 2025.26.

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