By Esmeralda Kale
Gifts come in all shapes and sizes, and this past year the Herskovits Library was fortunate to receive a gift of a painting by the world-renowned artist Paul Collins of Grand Rapids, titled the Maasai Warrior. This painting is a gift from NU alum Stan McConner Jr. on behalf of the McConner family trust in honor of Professor Ivor Wilks, a man who inspired him. Professor Emeritus Ivor Wilks was a distinguished historian renowned for his work on the history of the Asante empire of Ghana.
The painting was unveiled on May 19, 2022, in the south tower of the Herskovits Library. It had originally resided in the offices of Johnson & Johnson in Chicago. Mr. McConner Jnr tells how this painting enthralled him while he had a summer job at the Johnson & Johnson offices in 1975. He would look at it and think of how majestic it was (just like himself). Given as a gift to his family by the Johnsons, many years later, a codicil in his father’s will indicated that the painting should be given to his alma mater. In 2018, Mr. McConner Jnr contacted me about giving the painting to Northwestern University, the institution that granted his father his second PhD in 1985.
Stan came across Professor Wilks during his sophomore year at Northwestern. On the recommendation of his roommate, he signed up for a 12 to 20 class offered by Wilks. Back then, a 12 to 20 class only required submitting a 12 to 20-page essay. Stan tells the story that after he submitted his paper, Professor Wilks asked him to include footnotes. He retyped the paper, resubmitted it, and was inspired by the comment he received. “Submit for publication” words that encouraged him to go a little further in life. At the unveiling, Stan said, “this painting represents what Ivor meant to me ….Ivor Wilks was a good man, and having him in your life was a good thing. Those of you who met him, knew him, and worked with him, you were privileged and didn’t even know it.”
Stan McConner Jnr is a businessman and retired educator with interest in rocketry.
Esmeralda Kale is the George & Mary LeCron Foster Curator of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies
Recent additions to the Herskovits Library
A collection of photobooks published by Republican Press in South Africa. Magazines of this nature were popular in various parts of the world from the 1960s–80s.
The limited edition of the tale of the hero warrior Antar. This is an old story known to many. Antar was the son of an Abyssinian slave and an Arab nobleman who rose from humble beginnings to become a poet, a leader, and a protector of his tribe. Devic, L. Marcel, and Etienne Dinet. Antar: Poème héroïque arabe. Trans. L. Marcel Devic. Paris: L’Édition d’art, H. Piazza et Cie, éditeurs, 1898.
A poster by Augustin Tschinkel, Neger (Negroes). Color linocut 44 x 32.5 cm. Berlin: Édition Werner Kunze, (1972). His Linocut “Neger” was initially issued in 1931 in response to the Exposition Coloniale in Paris. Tschinkel presents Africans not as colonial subjects but as proud warriors.