For Professor Chief Simon Ottenberg

I met Janet Stanley of the Warren M. Robbins Library, National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, in 1990 while she was on a trip to Nigeria, to interview practicing Nigerian artists. In the same year, with her help, I made my first trip to the United States and had my first solo exhibition at Mimi Wolford's Mbari Gallery, in Washington, DC.During that visit, Janet Stanley was again instrumental, as she facilitated a meeting when I was able to show my paintings to Director Sylvia H. Williams of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art. At the end of our meeting, the director selected a painting (Fig. 1), entitled Through the Broken Wall We Saw the Chameleon Change Its Colors (1990), and informed me that she wanted the museum to acquire it. More importantly, she said she wanted me to meet with a gentleman who was then on a sabbatical at the Museum. She said that I should tell him all that had transpired between us and the discussion on Uli art and what was going on in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. That gentleman was Professor Simon Ottenberg.The meeting with Professor Simon Ottenberg was cordial, and he was curious to see me at work. I obliged his request, and a video of me at work was recorded at the Museum. Although he had considered returning to Nigeria to continue his study of Afikpo arts, that meeting led Professor Ottenberg to shift to a new area of research that focused on the artists of the Nsukka School. That research resulted in his 1997 book New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group, and the accompanying exhibition, The Poetics of Line, which was on view at the Museum from October 22, 1997-April 26, 1998. It was an honor to be included with six other artists (Fig. 2) in this important exhibition, which also introduced my work to a wider international audience.While preparing for the exhibition, I had the singular honor of hosting Professor Ottenberg in Nigeria, a gesture he reciprocated by inviting me in 1995 to exhibit at his Fuschia Gallery, which was in his home in Seattle (it also housed his traditional African art collection). During my visit he arranged for me to talk about traditional Uli art to students in the Department of Painting at the University of Washington, Seattle.I am aware that Simon Ottenberg donated eleven of my paintings that he acquired over several years to the Newark Museum of Art, in New Jersey. One of these works (Untitled, 1997) formed part of their exhibition The Art of Translation: The Simon Ottenberg Gift of Modern and Contemporary Nigerian Art (May 15-November 3, 2013). As I plan to visit the Newark Museum in 2024 to see the paintings, I believe the images will remind me of the time I spent with Professor Emeritus, Chief Simon Ottenberg.