Sankofa: Tracing Lineage — Public Panel Discussion

What does a painting know that a deed record doesn't?

West African art carries lineage. It encodes kinship, migration, loss, and survival in form and symbol — preserving what colonial record-keeping was designed to erase. Sankofa: Tracing Lineage begins with that premise and asks: what does it mean to reach back for what was taken?

The works of African artists anchor this exhibition and this conversation. Though these artistis are unable to join us in person, their creative artifacts are present — and they speak. This panel assembles four practitioners to take up the questions art work raises: about archives, ancestry, and what it costs to recover what was lost.

Panelists:

Paul Deaton is the collector, who without seeking, found profound art works and understood immediately what he was holding. A single owner had collected and held this vast collection of works, for over two decades, tucked away. Upon first look, Paul new he had a collection that crosses the African diaspora — not as acquisition, but as stewardship. His is the story of how this collection came to Athens, why it matters, and what he hopes happens when a community finally sees it.

Angelia Jones is a researcher, author, and the unappointed steward of a 50-year-old Southwest Georgia Black-owned newspaper that exists in fragile physical form with no institutional safety net beneath it. Her work is the living proof that community-created records survive when someone decides they must.

Ashleigh Oatts is the Curator at the T.R.R. Cobb House Museum and the researcher building a database of enslaved people connected to Athens families — recovering names, relationships, and lineages one document at a time.

Sidney Pettice is an art historian, curator, and scholar whose work centers the African diaspora and the cultural record Black artists have kept alive across generations.

This event is free and open to the public. The Sankofa exhibition will be open for self-guided viewing before and after the panel.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Taylor-Grady House at Landmark Commons