MILWAUKEE, WI.- This Fall the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University will host three exhibitions and a full slate of free programs titled The Otherworld is Home. Inspired by the Yorùbá proverb, “Life is a journey, the otherworld is home” (Ayé l’àjò, ọ̀run n’ilé), the Fall season invites a journey across multiple centuries and continents through works from fifteenth-century Mali to newly created pieces by contemporary artists. Gallery talks, Community Day activities, and more will explore themes of shared human experiences, personal reclamation, cultural identity, spiritual passage, and connection across Africa’s many diasporas. Free and open to the public, The Otherworld is Home opens on August 28, 2026.
African Art: Ancient Roots, Enduring Values features over 40 classical and neoclassical works, highlighting how African artists use traditional craftsmanship to connect the tangible and spiritual worlds. Iké Udé: Sartorial Anarchy showcases how Nigerian-born, New York-based artist Iké Udé blends diverse historical garments to celebrate African beauty and challenge siloed cultural identities. Thresholds brings together four contemporary multimedia artists whose works dialog with the Haggerty Museum of Art's African collection to explore and reclaim the resilience of Black cultural memory.
The Exhibitions
Featuring over 40 rarely exhibited works from the Haggerty Museum of Art’s collection, African Art: Ancient Roots, Enduring Values explores how classical African art bridges the visible world and the invisible spiritual realm. Through forms like masks and divination tools, these objects were intended to inspire society, deepen devotion, and navigate the space between earthly and otherworldly realms.
The exhibition includes classical works alongside neoclassical pieces created by late 20th and 21st century artists for local and global audiences. Together, these works highlight the extraordinary skill, creative innovation, and rigorous apprenticeships that have sustained Africa’s dynamic artistic traditions past and present. See full exhibition description here.
African Art: Ancient Roots, Enduring Values was curated by Dr. Henry John Drewal, Evjue-Bascom Professor Emeritus, Departments of Art History and African American Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Drewal specializes in the arts of the Yorùbá-speaking peoples of West Africa and the African Diaspora.
In Iké Udé: Sartorial Anarchy, the Nigerian-born artist Iké Udé merges clothing and objects across diverse eras and cultures to challenge fixed notions of identity. Serving as designer, painter, and model, Udé transforms himself into multifaceted personas that bridge irreconcilable cultural differences through harmonious, elegant self-portraits.
More than a study of fashion, Udé’s work aims to "beautify Africa for the world, one portrait at a time." Drawing visual inspiration from masters like Vermeer and Jacob Lawrence, his portraits radiate confidence, color, and texture. Udé's self-portraits invite viewers to reflect on the complex relationship between our inner and outer selves.
Iké Udé: Sartorial Anarchy was curated by Lynne Shumow, Curator for Academic Engagement, Haggerty Museum of Art.
Thresholds features contemporary artists Aisha Tandiwe Bell, Portia Cobb, Stephen Hamilton, and Daniel Minter in a dynamic "call and response" with African works from the Haggerty Museum of Art’s collection. Working across media, these artists bridge the seen and unseen, present and ancestral, to explore the resilience of Black cultural memory.
Bell explores plural diasporic identities, while Cobb documents Gullah Geechee oral histories to resist "forced forgetting." Hamilton uses traditional Nigerian textile and carving techniques grounded in Yorùbá thought, and Minter assembles found materials through Black Atlantic spiritual traditions to channel ancestral strength.
Together, their works engage the Haggerty’s collection in a participatory exchange, treating history as a living archive actively embodied, critically reflected upon, and renewed in the present. See full exhibition description here.
Organized in partnership with the Indigo Arts Alliance, an artist residency and incubator in Portland, ME committed to the artistic development of Black and Brown Artists.
