Brooklyn, 13 December 2011

Brooklyn Museum announced the death of William C. Siegmann from the African Arts and Pacific Islands’ department. Siegmann had a long and deep connection with Liberia, that he discovered in his youth while serving in the Peace Corps at the end of 1960s. Later, he returned to the United States and began a university career at Cuttington University where he contributed to founding Africana Museum.

From 1974 to 1976, he decided to return to Libera in order to continue his research and to enrich his knowledge in the domain of African arts and culture. Back in the United States, he worked at Museum of the Society of African Missions in Tenafly, then at Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco from 1979 to 1984. After returning from Africa, he became head of the African arts and Pacific Islands department at Brooklyn Museum in 1987, where he remained for twenty years. During these twenty years, he contributed to the enrichment of the museum collections with over 1600 objects. During his mandate at Brooklyn Museum, he organised no less than eight major exhibitions, concerning different subjects of African art, for instance, “Adolph Gottlieb’s pictogrammes”. Recently, William Siegmann offered his consultant services to Saint Louis Art Museum. He was also recognised as one of the major experts on art from Liberia and Sierra Leone, to which he dedicated numerous books, including the art of masks from these regions.