Doran H. Ross 1947–2020

Abstract

We remember Doran H. Ross, who passed away on September 16, 2020, after a long illness. Doran was a towering presence in our field of African art studies, not just for his size and charismatic personality but for the legacy he has left us as a prodigious scholar, curator, and leader as well as friend and mentor to so many. It was at California State University, Fresno, with the encouragement of Raphael Reichert and working on a double major in art history and psychology, that he was first introduced to African art and where that journey really began. He received his MA in art history at UC Santa Barbara and went on to teach at various California institutions until his distinguished career at the Fowler Museum began in 1981 as associate director and curator of Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceanic arts; he later became deputy director and curator of African Collections, before becoming the first nonfaculty full-time director in 1996, a position he held until he retired in 2001. His first major exhibition at the Fowler (then the UCLA Museum of Cultural History) was The Arts of Ghana (1977), which he and Herbert M. Cole co-curated, as well as coauthoring the comprehensive publication that accompanied it. Doran was among the most important scholars of Ghanaian arts in the world-many would argue the foremost-with research interests that centered on the royal and military arts of the Akan peoples, especially their dress, adornment, and regalia. Among his Akan publication highlights are Akan Gold from the