The G.A.S. Library and Picton Archive are delighted to announce the loan of 43 materials that includes 29 original print editions of the Black Orpheus journal - a rare and valuable collection that marks the beginning of an exciting new partnership with OlongoAfrica. This two-year loan will facilitate the work of OlongoAfrica’s Black Orpheus Fellowship, and enhance G.A.S. Foundation’s existing archive collection. The collaboration ensures that the physical copies of the Black Orpheus journal will be made available to fellows chosen by OlongoAfrica as part of its Black Orpheus Exploration Project; other select researchers and eventually to the wider public throughout the loan period. (You can see the full list of OlongoAfrica Black Orpheus fellows here). Both organisations share common goals in advancing archival practices and research, supporting the revitalisation of visual and literary arts, and fostering meaningful dialogue and will be collaborating in other ways. The digitized archives of Black Orpheus have already been made available on OlongoAfrica.com.
The Black Orpheus journal was first published in Ìbàdàn in 1957 by Ulli Beier, a German expatriate, and remained over many volumes and editions into the mid-nineties. On the editorial board over the years were Chinua Achebe, Wole Ṣóyínká, Janheinz Jahn, Christopher Okigbo, J P Clark, Theo Vincent, Femi Osofisan, and several other important literary icons.
According to Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, Nigerian writer and founder of OlongoAfrica, G.A.S. Foundation was selected for this on-the-ground collaboration “because of its importance as a Nigerian culture institution, its location in the heart of Lagos, and its ambition to create a world-class library, art and culture engagement space. It has experience with holding and caring for archival materials, and it has the necessary capacity to manage access.” Túbọ̀sún’s recent documentary biopic Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory was screened at G.A.S in October 2024.
The loan includes the following publications: Black Orpheus Volume 1: the complete set (22 issues), Black Orpheus Volume 2 (2 issues), Black Orpheus Volume 3 (2 issues), Black Orpheus Volume 5 (1 issue), Black Orpheus Volume 6 (1 issue), Black Orpheus “Yorùbá Poetry” Special Edition, Peter Benson’s Black Orpheus, Transition, and Modern Cultural Awakening, Kimberli Gant Hard’s Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club, Florence Ostende & Lotte Johnson’s Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art and a complete set of New Culture Magazine (11 issues).
About the Black Orpheus Fellowship Facilitators
Molará Wood
Editor-in-Chief of the Black Orpheus Project
With credits across film, literature and visual art, Wood has served on the judging panels of several awards including: the Zuma International Film Festival, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, and the Quramo Writers Prize. She lately served on the judging panel for the LOATAD Black Atlantic Residency 2025. Artistic endeavours include ART for the People Podcast, ‘One of the 30 Best Visual Arts Podcasts on the Web 2021’ as selected by Feedspot. She is a contributor to publications including OlongoAfrica, the BBC, and The Irish Times. She is the author of Indigo, a collection of short stories published in 2013. She won the inaugural John La Rose Memorial Short Story Competition, and received a Commonwealth Broadcasting Association award for her fiction. Fellowships include the LOATAD West African Writers Residency 2022; the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency 2023, and the Villa Karo Residency in the Republic of Benin. Molara Wood is a member of the Advisory/Editorial Board for Black-Eyed Squint Press. She is currently a Nonfiction Editor for Guernica Magazine.
Seun Alli
Consultant and Programme Coordinator
Seun Alli is a Lagos-based lawyer, art broker, curator, and cultural strategist. Seun is also Founder and Managing Director of June Creative Art Advisory (JCAA) - a leading art advisory providing specialist support for artists, collectors, brands and corporate entities. With over nine years of experience, she has worked with individuals, brands, and institutions to develop exhibitions, art collections, interactive installations, and community-driven projects. Her expertise spans exhibition curation, artist collaborations, audience engagement, and project management.
Seun co-curated the Black Orpheus Revisited exhibition in 2024 in collaboration with Art X Lagos. She has since worked with Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún and his team to provide support, develop and manage some of OlongoAfrica’s programmes and projects.
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún is a Nigerian writer, linguist, independent academic researcher, and writer, with over a decade of fieldwork in African studies, literature, and technology He’s the author of Edwardsville by Heart (2018), Ìgbà Èwe: Translated Poems of Emily R. Grosholz (2021), and Èṣù at the Library & Other Poems (2024). He's the Africa co-editor of Best Literary Translations anthology published by Deep Vellum, now in its third year; and publisher of OlongoAfrica. He is a Fulbright scholar (2009), Miles Morland Writing Fellow (2018), and Chevening Research Fellow at the British Library (2019/2020). His work in language advocacy earned him the Premio Ostana Special Prize in Cuneo Italy in 2016, and his recent work in film has earned him three awards for Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory. He can be found at kolatubosun.com.
About the Black Orpheus Fellowship
OlongoAfrica’s Black Orpheus Fellowship Programme began in November 2024 and will subsist until October 2025. It is currently funded by grant support of the Open Society Foundations. Selected fellows have begun work, which ranges from creating derivative visual arts (Yadichinma Ukoha-Kalu) to using metadata of the archives to interrogate literary history (Tinashe Mushakavanhu). See the rest here. All the fellows’ work is remote, but collaborations with physical spaces like G.A.S. Foundation, Angels & Muse Lagos, University of Kansas, Lagos Studies Association — and others not yet confirmed — will help support activities that involve archival records access, quiet spaces for work or study, exhibition locations, and conference collaborations on ongoing projects.