The team at Carnegie Museum of Art unpack Palettes of Ambition, the Ghanaian artist’s monumental artwork conjured from everyday waste
El Anatsui is known for transforming discarded, everyday materials into tapestrylike works that at once challenge the boundaries between art and craft, and weave together cultural and political histories. His work Palettes of Ambition, Carnegie Museum of Art’s most meaningful single art acquisition in the last 50 years, is a monumental wall-hung sculpture measuring ten metres long and five metres high. Anatsui’s work, located at the museum’s front entrance, welcomes the public into the museum and invites viewers to reflect on questions around materiality, history and the power dynamics that underlie notions of wealth and value. It also asks viewers to consider the following: whose ambition does this work allude to?
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