Silvia Forni’s “aha!” moment came on a serendipitous trip to Algeria during her fourth year of college. Back in her hometown of Turin, Italy, she had started undergraduate study in philosophy, but she found it “so abstract and rarefied that you lose the sense of practice and everyday life.” So she switched to anthropology.
In Algeria, she found a stark contrast to the theoretical nature of philosophy — specifically, in Tuareg silversmiths. Her face lights up at the memory. “They were producing these really remarkably beautiful objects with technologies and practices that were unfamiliar to me, but reflective of a long tradition,” she says, spreading her hands wide. She spent subsequent days in the silversmiths’ workshops, peppering them with questions. She was discovering the meaning of their work. And finding her own.
Forni left Algeria ready to explore other unfamiliar places. Soon her Ph.D. research took her to Cameroon to work with ceramicists, women who made clay pots. “I was able to spend time with the women in this patriarchal society and see their perspective through their work,” she says. She’s returned many times, as recently as last year. Her eyes take on a faraway look. “Part of my heart,” she says, “is in Cameroon.”
“Who Is Telling the Story?”
Forni’s fascination with contemporary makers and “the meaning of practice” has driven her intellectual path and her career — as a professor, a curator and now a museum director. Last September, Forni was named the Shirley & Ralph Shapiro Director of the Fowler Museum at UCLA, formally taking the reins in December.
Today, she’s sitting in her book-lined office in the back rooms of the Fowler. One of UCLA’s crown jewels, the Fowler is housed in a small brick building nestled below Royce Hall, not far from Janss Steps. Dressed in black and wearing a contemporary, handwrought silver-and-black necklace, Forni tells her story without hesitation, often chuckling at the adventures and discoveries that have brought her to this time and place.
“Whether they define themselves as crafts people or don’t define themselves at all doesn’t matter to me,” she says of the makers, running her fingers through her long, dark hair. Instead, what intrigues her, she says, is how the tourist market, patrons and international trade influence their production process: “I try to understand their thinking in relation to their creation, their aesthetics, how they make choices.”
The origins of the Fowler, one of the world’s top museums focusing on the arts and cultures of Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Indigenous Americas, reaches back to the early 1960s, when then-Chancellor Franklin Murphy gleaned 3,000 pieces of cultural material from across campus, objects that had been gathered by archaeology professors since the 1930s. In 1964, Murphy negotiated a gift of 30,000 objects from British (but American-born) pharmaceutical entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome, suddenly making UCLA one of the top American institutions holding African and Pacific works of art. Today, the Fowler’s collection includes more than 120,000 artworks from Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific and about 600,000 archaeological objects, stored in various locations on campus.
Visitors to the museum can view the arts and cultural wonders of faraway places they might otherwise never see, and attend eclectic public programs such as music and dance performances and presentations on global cuisine. The museum’s collections inform and inspire research, reflected in interpretive exhibitions. It’s an environment in which Forni can continue her scholarship while also providing leadership and direction, at a time when museums seek to be more inclusive and more respectful of cultures of origin.
Her efforts have already attracted notice. “It’s been great seeing how Silvia combines a clear sense of the Fowler’s history and accomplishments with a fresh eye toward approaching old challenges and finding new opportunities,” says Matthew Robb, the Fowler’s chief curator.
“Museums are being called to reset their values, or at least act on their values,” Forni says. “It’s not just about presenting art, but who is telling the story of that art? Who has the voice to describe the art? Our academic interests sometimes intersect with socially and politically complicated histories. We must reflect the intent and desires of the community.”
This shifting methodology is transforming the way museums think of themselves and the works they present. Although the Fowler has connected with communities for decades, Forni says it’s doing so increasingly and more systematically now, not just in programming but in the conception of the exhibitions, co-creating with community members from the outset. A current exhibition, for example, will showcase the work of a contemporary photographer from L.A.’s Armenian community and will have an Armenian curator.
From the start, Forni “seemed to have the drive to take the Fowler to its fullest potential,” says Diana Magaloni, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and director of its Program for the Art of the Ancient Americas. She served on the UCLA search committee that selected Forni. “I was impressed by her knowledge and love of the Fowler and the museum world,” she says, “and her understanding of the Fowler’s role within UCLA and the community.”
A Bridge Between UCLA and L.A.
Long before Forni ever visited the UCLA campus, she was drawn to the Fowler’s traveling exhibitions in other parts of the country. The museum’s recent exhibition of Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana reflects Forni’s collaboration a decade ago with a former Fowler director, the late Doran Ross. The two traveled together to Ghana to document flag collections at both the Fowler and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where Forni served as a senior curator from 2018 to 2023. “It’s kind of serendipitous,” she says, “that this project came to fruition just as I was hired to be the Fowler’s director.”
Now that she’s here, the Fowler’s responsibility to the people of Los Angeles is top of mind. “We want to make sure they feel that these collections are here for them, a part of their heritage,” she says. “We need to reach people who might not think of coming to UCLA to see an exhibition, might not know who we are. So we’re taking programs into the city, where they live, and working with educators in their communities.”
“It’s Silvia’s careful and sustained attention to the role that museums can and should play in society that make her a great addition to the Fowler,” says Elizabeth Harney, associate professor, associate chair and director of graduate studies in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. “She combines intellectual accomplishment with a keen interest in public education and community engagement.”
Forni seems eager for the possibilities that lie ahead. She says that nothing a museum can do is more important than connecting with communities. “We must put relationships at the forefront of our mission and consider the potential of art to impact people,” she says, “to help them ask new questions, or see the world in a new way.”
Read more from UCLA Magazine’s Summer 2023 issue.
