The RCA Remembers Bisi Silva (MA Visual Arts Administration: Curating and Commissioning Contemporary Art, 1996)

A graduate of what was then the newly inaugurated Royal College of Art Visual Arts Administration MA Programme (now the MA Curating Contemporary Art), supported by Arts Council and Tate and led by former Tate Head of Information Teresa Gleadowe, Bisi had a significant impact on global curating practice, as well as bringing a generation of artists to new audiences and promoting arts education.

In 2007 Bisi founded the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Lagos, introducing a new kind of arts organisation into a culture of commercial painting and sculpture galleries. As well as being a platform for research and exhibitions on African art, CCA hosts a substantial library and the Àsìkò International Art School.

Bisi curated influential shows at CCA and transnational collaborations between museums and galleries across the globe, as well as the Dak’Art Biennale, Senegal, in 2006. She served as a member of the international jury for the Venice Biennale 2013 and was a regular contributor to international art journals including Artforum.

Professor Victoria Walsh, Head of the Curating Contemporary Art Programme, said, ‘This is a great loss to the art world and as the many messages circulating online and in the art press testify Bisi was immensely respected and valued by the many artists and curators she worked with, and also by her peers, alumni and the staff of the CCA Programme.’

Read tributes to Bisi Silva in the New York Times, Artforum, ArtNews and Okay Africa.

Alumni, tutors and friends remember Bisi Silva:

‘I was very fortunate to have studied with Bisi Silva and my abiding memory is of her respectful challenge to Jean-Hubert Martin on his curation of Magiciens de la Terre during a seminar. And so she continued, fearless and steadfast, forging alliances, nurturing artistic relationships to contribute to the transformation of contemporary African art across the continent and reaching far beyond. In my most recent conversation with her, she was generous and encouraging. This must typify many of her relationships or how else could she have been the stalwart to a great many artists, curators and scholars? Bisi will be dearly missed though she leaves a profound legacy to allow others to continue her remarkable work.’
Melanie Keen (MA Visual Arts Administration, 1995) and Director, Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts)

'Bisi was a warm, joyous and buoyant student, outgoing and popular. Already she was developing a keen interest in contemporary art from the Global South, in particular art from Africa, and in the lack of visibility for black artists, as evidenced in the MA dissertation she wrote about ‘The Thin Black Line’, the seminal exhibition organised by Lubaina Himid at the ICA in 1985, and about other key exhibitions of the 1980s and 1990s that first promoted the work of black artists – especially black women artists – in Britain.  Her death is a huge loss.'
Teresa Gleadowe, first director of the Visual Arts Administration Programme (1992 to 2006)

'Bisi's contribution to the professional development of curators in Nigeria and in West Africa is a great legacy.’
Sally Tallant, outgoing Director of the Liverpool Biennial, recently appointed Director of Queens Museum, New York and a graduate of the Visual Arts Administration Programme