Welcome

This digital catalogue, the first of its kind at Penn State, was produced in conjunction with the exhibition African Brilliance: A Diplomat’s Sixty Years of Collecting, organized by the Palmer Museum of Art and on view at the museum February 8 through May 24, 2020. The exhibition presents a survey of African art as seen through the lens of retired U.S. Ambassador Allen Davis, whose long career with the State Department afforded him the opportunity to build an outstanding collection representing many of the key cultures of West, Central, and East Africa.

Essays by William Dewey, Penn State associate professor of art history, and Mary Jo Arnoldi, curator emerita of anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, with sixty–seven catalogue entries by Dewey, Arnoldi, and Penn State Ph.D. candidate Janet Purdy. Foreword by Palmer Museum of Art director Erin M. Coe. 

Funded through a strategic initiative seed grant awarded by Penn State’s Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost.