2005 Media Files Page
Articles reprinted in 2005 from contributors, newspapers and magazines in the ATADA Newsletter
Table of Contents
Media Files - antique and tribal art issues as seen from the point of view of the outside world reprinted from The ATADA Newsletter.
Media Files from the Winter 2005 Issue of The ATADA Newsletter
- A lost artifact relocated at The Peabody Museum
- Indian Art Meets Craft to Inspire and Adorn: Roberta Smith's review of the exhibit "Totems to Turquoise"
- Art dealer guilty in Navajo blanket case
- Painting Stolen from Taos Gallery Recovered in California
- Nonhegemonic Curating
- Critic's Notebook: Who Should Tell History: The Tribes or the Museums?
- An Associated Press story on a museum theft that mentioned ATADA
- Surfaces: Color, Substances and Ritual Applications on African Sculpture
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Winter_2005
Indian Art Meets Craft to Inspire and Adorn.
Roberta Smith's review of the exhibit "Totems to Turquoise" appeared on October 29, 2004, in The New York Times.
"We are not left to our own devices in 'Totems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest,' Smith begins, 'the always illuminating, sometimes beautiful, but also excessively orchestrated exhibition opening tomorrow at the American Museum of Natural History. 'Look Closely!' an annoying badgelike label exhorts in each of the 40 vitrines that dominate the show. The command singles out a bracelet, bolo tie, squash blossom necklace, amulet or some other small gleaming object for special attention a block of tiny print explains what we should look for.
"The guidance is actually helpful. It takes some encouragement to wade into the graphic and aural clutter that surround the objects on display and anyone looking at them. As an experience, the exhibition combines aspects of a high-end crafts fair, anthropological study, a fine-art show and a walk-in catalog of both the museum and mail-order variety. Each vitrine is peppered with texts and labels, as well as photographs and biographical sketches of the artists whose work is on display.
"The artists also appear on several video monitors, working in their studios and talking typical artist-talk: about the importance of mentors, of nature and dreams, the search for individuality and the comfort of tradition, the following and breaking of rules. Their voices often compete with the shifting sounds of chirping birds, breaking waves, chants and drums.
"At times you may also be reminded of the jewelry department of a didactically inclined department store think Barneys or Bergdorf Goodman but with an overactive outreach component. (Not surprisingly, there is a seamless transition from the exhibition to the gift shop, where jewelry by some of the same artists, or their relatives, is for sale, and tends to be easier to see.)
"'Totems and Turquoise' has the good idea of juxtaposing the rich visual traditions of the tribal groups of the American Northwest with those of the Southwest. It was organized by Lois S. Dubin, an independent curator, and Peter M. Whiteley, curator of North American ethnology at the museum. Jim Hart, a leading Haida artist from British Columbia, and Jesse Monongya, a Navajo artist, served as consultants.
"The show consists of around 400 works from the 20th and 21st centuries, predominantly jewelry and metalwork. These are chaperoned by 100 or so historical pieces from museum collections, which include jewelry as well as Zuni ceramics, Navajo blankets and a Tlingit carved wood dish inlaid with abalone shell. The historical material sets a high standard for the newer things, and not all of them reach it. This makes the show an interesting essay on the very notion of traditions, how they are formed, perpetuated, renewed, exploited or exhausted.
"At the same time, the display subversively mixes together work from different artists and periods, which tends to throw off the reflexive old-is-good, new-is-bad approach. A pair of large square earrings, in which little bits of turquoise are arranged around an empty pane of silver like masonry around a window, looks new but actually dates from the 10th to 12th centuries. And in the same display case, don't miss the petit-point turquoise concho belt from the 1970s by Edith Tsabetsaye, a Zuni artist.
"In a nearby vitrine you can compare four more concho belts made over 120 years, whose repeating discs of worked silver are either strung together or mounted on leather. In one, from 1990, the discs have been replaced by silver and brass mousetraps, an example of tradition reduced to sensational yet empty skill, a frequent fate among the most recent works here.
"The Northwest and Southwest aesthetics play off each other well, though the two streams are kept separate. In the deserts and hills of the Southwest, the Hopi, Navajo, Zuni and Pueblo Indians accounted for the cosmos in geometric and symmetrical terms both figurative or abstract, whether the representation was a hieratic Hopi kachina doll or a Navajo chief's blanket with parading ziggurats and stripes. Materials like turquoise and coral were characteristically used in their original shapes, very simply cut or drilled."
"Some of the beaded, multistrand necklaces, like those by Martine Lovato, by Joe B. and Terry Reano or by their daughter Angie Reano Owen (all of the Santo Domingo Pueblo in New Mexico), have the heft and presence of not-no-small sculptures. One of the most over-the-top uses of turquoise occurs in a marvelously topographic squash-blossom necklace by a Zuni jeweler named Delia Casa Appi it dates from the 1920s, a period during which some of the best pieces in the show were made.
"On the Northwest coast, the Haida, Tlingit and Kwakwaka'wakw, who lived primarily by fishing, devised vocabularies of fluid, zoological shape-shifting forms and faces. This prevailing emphasis on metamorphosis, both spiritual and physical, is announced at the beginning of the show by a Kwakwaka'wakw transformation mask from around 1900 that depicts a thunderbird whose head opens like a flower to reveal a human face within.
"The older material on view keeps this show honest. It often suggests that the traditions pursued here are not as lively as they used to be, but that they still yield moments of viability, along with dead-in-the-water kitsch. Above all, it confirms that tradition moves in ways both mysterious and not.
"On hand are the totems and bracelets of the great Haida artist Charles Edenshaw (1839-1920), who in the 1880s encouraged his people to translate the split representations of animal and human faces from their totem poles to bracelets made of thin, repousé silver and gold as a means of supporting themselves. On the evidence of similar bracelets here, Edenshaw started a tradition that is still followed rather faithfully, but effectively, by numerous artists.
"A totem pole, carved at the museum by Mr. Hart earlier this week, also finds its power by staying within conventional forms. So do the extraordinary animal-face pendants of the Kwakwaka'wakw artist Kevin Cranmer, although my favorite work in the relatively spare vitrine holding Mr. Cranmer's pieces is less familiar: a small carved human head painted red and black.
"The rings and bracelets of Kenneth Begay (1913-1977), often called the father of Navajo modern jewelry, are notable for the way they both reduce and refine the directness evident in so much Southwest Indian jewelry his pared-down designs stand out wherever they pop up in the show. At the other extreme, Mr. Monongya's flamboyant work pumps up and almost parodies tradition, most spectacularly in a bolo tie whose postcard-perfect depiction of Monument Valley, made of inlaid coral and lapis lazuli, is so radiant, refined and saccharine that it might almost be an animated Disney cartoon on a tiny television screen.
" 'Totems and Turquoise' is a complicated package of art and commerce, special pleading and the real thing - just like any other art exhibition, only perhaps a little more overt. It reveals two interconnected art worlds that while less familiar than those that co-exist and sometimes collide in New York City, are art worlds nonetheless. They encompass elders and acolytes, markets and collectors, and artists who band together because of common traditions as they influence and encourage one another, convinced that they are part of a living tradition. The artists here may think they have a special connection to the spirituality of their forbears, but all art is essentially a faith-based initiative, a matter of belief, conviction and choice.
"Totems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest" at the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, (212) 769-5100, runs through July 10.
Art dealer guilty in Navajo blanket case.
A News Brief from the Santa Fe New Mexican November 4, 2004.
"A Santa Fe art dealer accused of bilking a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman out of $260,000 has pleaded guilty to one count of embezzlement," the story began. "Joshua Baer, 51, entered his plea Tuesday before District Judge Michael Vigil, sentenced him to five years' probation.Baer was accused of selling three antique Navajo blankets owned by Arthur Levitt and then not paying Levitt his share of the money.
"As part of Baer's plea, he agreed to pay $260,000 in restitution to an insurance company that had insured the blankets. Levitt had put the blankets on consignment with Baer, who sold them. Baer has said he had a business relationship with Levitt, who was appointed to the SEC by President Clinton.
"In 2002, Baer pleaded guilty to charges that accused him of selling migratory bird and eagle feathers and Indian religious object. A judge sentenced him to three years' probation."
Painting Stolen from Taos Gallery Recovered in California
Also from The New Mexican, November 12, a story of art theft by Jason Auslander.
The story: "The recovery of a painting stolen from a Taos art gallery in April might shed light on some of the recent thefts of American Indian art from Santa Fe galleries, a detective said Thursday.
" 'There is some indication that the people stealing art in Taos are the same people stealing art in Santa Fe,' said Barry Holfelder, a detective with the Taos Police Department. 'I would not be surprised to find that many of these art thefts are connected.'
"The possible break in the rash of art thefts in Taos and Santa Fe during the last 18 months began late last month when Taos art dealer Robert Parsons stumbled onto the Web site of an auction house near Pasadena, Calif., which listed a painting for sale that was stolen from his gallery, Holfelder said.
Parsons discovered the painting - 'Return of the War Party' by E.I. Couse - on Oct. 25 and it was scheduled to be auctioned the next day at 6:45 p.m., he said. Holfelder called an investigator with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, who contacted John Moran Antique and Fine Art Auctioneers in Altadena, Calif., he said.
"The auction house was cooperative and agreed to pull the piece from the auction, Holfelder said. But more importantly, the auction house was able to provide the name of the man, who lives in Santa Fe, who sent the painting to be sold, he said.
"Holfelder refused to identify the Santa Fe man and said he hasn't interviewed him yet. He said he doesn't know how the man, who is in his 50s, came into possession of the painting and told the auction house he didn't know it was stolen. 'I don't know if he's guilty of any crime at this point,' he said.
"Holfelder said he planned to visit various Santa Fe galleries that have experienced recent thefts of Indian art - and were able to provide a description of the thief - in an attempt to link the various thefts. He said he thinks at least some of the thefts in Taos and Santa Fe are related because descriptions of the thief and the way he operates were similar. The thief has been described as a Hispanic male between 40 and 60 years old, between 5-feet-6-inches and 5-feet-8-inches tall with salt-and-pepper hair, Holfelder said. The man often wears a tan Eddie Bauer-style barn jacket and matching tan hat, he said. In several cases, art-gallery personnel reported that a man and woman were responsible for the theft and that one in the duo distracted workers while the other did the stealing, he said.
"The thief or thieves don't arouse much suspicion among art-gallery personnel and have a keen eye for expensive and high-quality Indian art, Holfelder said. In addition, they have a good idea how to get rid of the art or are collecting it, he said. 'This is somebody who knows what they're doing,' Holfelder said. While some paintings have been stolen, mainly the thieves have taken items like jewelry, rugs, moccasins and Indian dresses, he said.
"Parsons said the painting - which was priced at $38,000 at his gallery - was stolen April 12, 2003, but no one saw who took it. The painting was priced at $10,000 on the auctioneer Web site and expected to bring in $20,000 to $25,000, Holfelder said.
"However, Parsons said he believes the same person who stole the painting came back a month later and stole a $1,000 Indian pot. In that case, a gallery employee saw the man walk out with a shopping bag and stopped him. The man handed the bag to the employee and told her he was bringing the pot to the gallery's owner, Parson said. He said he concluded it was the same man who stole the painting after he had heard his description from other art dealers in Taos and Santa Fe. Parsons' insurance company paid for the painting after it was stolen and now owns it, he said."
Nonhegemonic Curating
A mini-article by Christopher Shea which was part of The New York Times Sunday Magazine's annual issue, "The Year in Ideas," published on December 12.
Shea writes: "The opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian this September was a landmark event in the recognition of the history and the plight of native peoples. But the grand opening may prove to be a landmark in the history -- and perhaps the plight -- of museum curating as well.
"Because Native American mythology is rooted in the idea that Indians have always inhabited this continent, scientifically informed discussion of how North America came to be populated has been banished from the museum's halls. The exhibits, moreover, reject the supposedly Eurocentric notion of historical development. ''Things are looked at very cyclically, not in a linear way,' one curator told The Washington Post.
"Thus, spears and arrowheads dating from 9000 B.C. to the 20th century appear together on one wall, unlabeled, in a beautiful array resembling schools of fish to get even sketchy details about their provenance, you have to consult a separate electronic display. In another gallery, a young Indian discusses glass blowing on a video screen, alongside images of Tlingit house posts from Alaska, dating to 1830. The implicit message: Indian artists from across the ages are participants in one unified culture. Elsewhere, dozens of earthen figurines are accompanied by only this wall notation: 'Their world is ancient and modern, and forever changing, with memories from the beginning of everything.'
"Where specific tribes are discussed, 'community curators' selected by the tribes -- not anthropologists, not historians -- tell the stories.
"Not everyone appreciates the new hegemony-free museum. Edward Rothstein of The New York Times complained, 'The result is that monotony sets in every tribe is equal, and so is every idea.'
"But judging from attendance figures -- a healthy 275,400 in October, the first full month of operation -- this new kind of museum has its fans. Certainly, the desire for a fresh start is understandable. After all, curators dismantled the archaic Indian dioramas in the National Museum of Natural History, across the mall, only this year."
Critic's Notebook: Who Should Tell History: The Tribes or the Museums?
by Edward Rothstein was in The New York Times on December 21, 2004.
With a Chicago dateline, the story began: "Museums always make use of the past for the sake of the present. They collect it, shape it, insist on its significance. When that past is also prehistoric, when its objects come to the present without written history and with jumbled oral traditions, a museum can even become the past's primary voice.
"But what if that prehistoric past is also claimed by some as a living heritage? Then disagreements about interpretation develop into battles over the museum's very function.
"That was the result, for example, at the Smithsonian Institution's $219 million National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in September in Washington and calls itself a 'museum different.' George Gustav Heye's extraordinary collection of 800,000 tribal American objects is put in service of contemporary Indian cultures with tribal guest curators determining how their heritage is to be presented. The result is homogenized pap in which the collection is used not to reveal the past's complexities, but to serve the present's simplicities.
"There are, however, other ways in which the prehistoric past can be revealed, as two exhibitions in Chicago suggest. At the Field Museum, 'Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas,' is remarkable not just for its careful exploration of the famed archeological site high in the Peruvian Andes, but also for demonstrating an almost devotional care to exhuming a lost past. At the Art Institute of Chicago, 'Hero, Hawk and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South' is no less remarkable in its display of objects created by ancient American cultures, but it is subject to many of the same forces that molded the National Museum of the American Indian. Here though, rather than overturning the museum's enterprise, they merely distract from it.
"First, the Machu Picchu exhibition. Created by the Peabody Museum at Yale, it offers the largest collection of Incan artifacts ever shown in the United States, including robust three-foot-high jugs for corn beer (which was fermented by the saliva of women who chewed the maize before brewing it) samples of bright, geometrically ornamented 500-year-old fabrics and a corded 'quipu,' a linked collection of knotted strings used to record events and numerical accounts. The curators are Richard L. Burger, a Yale anthropologist, and Lucy C. Salazar, a Peruvian archaeologist.
"The major question about Machu Picchu has not been who speaks for its past, but what that past actually was. The site, with its terraced, mountainous landscape and stone structures, was known to only a few local inhabitants when it was discovered by Hiram Bingham III, who led Yale's Peruvian Expedition in 1911. As Mr. Berger and Ms. Salazar explain various hypotheses by Bingham, including one that the site was a sacred nunnery for Incan 'Virgins of the Sun,' have been conclusively disproved. The curators established, instead, that it was a summer retreat for a ruling Incan family, built between 1450 and 1470 and used only for about 80 years before being abandoned in the face of the Incas' defeat by Pizarro's Spanish armies.
"The exhibition also makes it clear what an extraordinary site Machu Picchu is. Nestled in the cloud-decked mountains of the Andes, its architecture serves as a kind of cosmic clock, the sun and constellations appearing in certain stone windows at specific times of the year. The exhibition shows how scientists have used bone fragments to analyze the Incan diet (60 percent maize), and demonstrates how Incan skulls were deliberately elongated by molds placed on infants' heads, presumably for aesthetic effect. One emerges astonished by this lost world.
"Still, there are subtle traces of contemporary claims evident in the portrayal of this prehistoric culture. After all, Machu Picchu is now a national symbol in Peru in 2001, it was used for the inauguration of the president, Alejandro Toledo. It is also the object of almost mystical devotion. Hundreds of thousands of tourists climb its ruins every year.
"In response, perhaps, there are hints of overly tactful delicacy in the exhibition's descriptions of Incan society. Incan aesthetic and cosmological preoccupations become clear, but other aspects do not, including a rigid social structure that involved forms of slavery, a religious culture that incorporated human sacrifice, and a military organization powerful enough to conquer 2,500 miles of the South American coastline and build 25,000 miles of roads. Mr. Berger, in an e-mail message, said that for the Peruvians, the Incans looked good compared to the Spaniards. The exhibition wants us to admire, and we do. But we know less about what we might admire less.
"At the Art Institute of Chicago more explicit pressures are at work, and they nearly derail the considerable achievements of 'Hero, Hawk and Open Hand.' The exhibition is devoted to products of societies that thrived along the Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers as early as 5,000 B.C. Their remnants can still be seen in landscapes near Newark, Ohio, or St. Clair County, Ill., in enormous earthen mounds and geometric shapes outlined by raised ground.
"These structures testify to a highly organized society barely glimpsed by European settlers. Some sites had already been abandoned by the time the Europeans arrived. Others were devastated by diseases brought by the settlers, which wiped out as much as 90 percent of their Indian populations.
"But as Richard F. Townsend, the curator of the department of African and Amerindian art at the Art Institute, shows, these cultures' mastery can be sensed in the objects produced: a haunting 2,000-year-old elongated face smoothed out of stone found in Kentucky a graceful, elegant hand cut out of mica from about the same era in Ohio a 500-year-old wooden figure - half human, half feline - found in Florida.
"Such a display, along with historical commentary, would once have been sufficient. But contemporary Indian tribes, supported by some scholars, have argued that they have an ancestral connection to these cultures. And since museums have not traditionally displayed much sensitivity toward living cultures, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act now obliges them to consult with tribes about their holdings. In preparation for the exhibition, four years were spent consulting with tribal leaders. But to what end?
"Joyce Bear, the cultural preservation officer of the Muscogee Nation, has the exhibition's first word, declaring on the wall leading to the galleries, that it will 'make our tribal people realize that we are descendants of a wonderful and great culture.' In the catalog, she proudly announces that the exhibition proves that 'I come from kings and queens.' The exhibition ends with a state -ment about a 'new, sweeping movement of cultural preservation' among Indians, including a film showing their renewal of traditions.
"But all this has little to do with the objects on display and makes it seem as if the exhibition's purpose were to boost tribal pride. Also, while there may indeed be ancient traditions that have found their way into contemporary practices, the nature of these connections, at the very least, demands closer scrutiny.
One anthropologist's assertion that contemporary Indian beliefs are 'analogous' to those of these ancient cultures is challenged by others in the catalog. Mr. Townsend writes that these earthworks were 'built by peoples whose achievements and ancestral connections to present day tribes are at best only vaguely surmised.' Robert L. Hall, an anthropologist, points out that Cahokia, an imposing culture on the Mississippi that was already in decline in the 14th century, 'left no written records and no native peoples possess oral traditions that specifically identify Cahokia or even recognize its existence.' In the 18th century, another writer says, Indians encountered by settlers 'did not construct mounds, nor did any of them have oral traditions relating to these earthworks.'
"Even the exhibition's explanations of these societies' workings seem idealized, skewed by contemporary sensitivities. In the catalog, for example, an anthropologist, David H. Dye, explores warfare among the Mississippi Indians, but it is barely alluded to in the exhibition, despite the presence of objects like a pipe (1200-1500 A.D.) sculpted as a bound captive and a vase whose decorations are 'trophy scalps stretched in a starlike pattern.' The exhibition gives so refined a picture of these societies that there is no way of knowing how important such images were, or where historical evidence of slavery and human sacrifice fits in.
"This is also, of course, what happened in the Smithsonian's Indian museum. Since almost no tribes had a written culture and oral traditions were disrupted by disease, massacre, government policy and assimilation, the tribal curators often seem to know less about their history than do scholars. Yet scholars' assessments are ignored in favor of self-promotional platitudes.
"All this is a form of guilty overcompensation for past museum sins that themselves need re-examination and assessment. In the meantime, exhibitions like the one on Machu Picchu serve as reminders of what is possible. And the objects at the Art Institute can still be heard straining to speak for themselves, despite the layers of promotional and political gauze in which they are wrapped."
An Associated Press story on a museum theft that mentioned ATADA
Datelined Daggett, Califonria, the story began, "A break-in discovered Christmas Day has robbed the museum in this Mojave Desert town of its most prized possessions, including antique dolls and American Indian artifacts on loan from local families.
"The thieves methodically cleared out glass display cases in the Daggett Museum, said curator Beryl Bell, who discovered the burglary when she went to feed her goldfish over the holiday. 'It's really heartbreaking for a small museum,' Bell said Wednesday.
"The stolen Indian artifacts include a basket appraised at $3,500, a Navajo sash and two large clay Acoma pots that had never been appraised but are valuable, said Leslie Lloyd, the president of the Daggett Historical Society, which runs the museum. The thieves also took antique dolls, model trains and other toys, farming implements and examples of rocks from the area, Lloyd said. The thieves ignored the computers and copy machine in the office of a local government agency that shares the low-slung modular building with the museum, but they stole $2 in coins from Lloyd's desk and a museum donation jar that contained about $10, she said.
"Despite the theft of the change, Lloyd believes the burglars were experienced, since they left no fingerprints and took steps to disable the alarm system - even though it wasn't operational at the time of the break-in. 'This appeared to be a very neat operation and it appeared they had a shopping list,' she said.
"The historical society has notified the Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association, which plans to post news of the break-in on its Web site and will inform its 250 members by e-mail to look out for the stolen artifacts, said Alice Kaufman, the organization's executive director. The historical society is offering a $500 reward to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the theft. 'What we're hoping is that if we raise enough fuss, it will at least raise their tail feathers some,' said Lloyd, 47, who has lived in the desert town of about 400 people all her life.
"The museum, some six miles east of Barstow and about 125 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, plans to increase security to protect what remains of its collection and is only offering tours by appointment."
Surfaces: Color, Substances and Ritual Applications on African Sculpture
On January 8, 2005, The New York Times published Holland Cotter's review.
Datelined Tenafly, NJ, the story began, "Drive over the Hudson River and through the woodsy streets of this suburb and you'll find a surprise: a museum devoted entirely to African art, with an eye-sharpening exhibition that may change the way you look at such art.
"Why are these things here? The museum is run by the Society of African Missions, an order of Roman Catholic priests established in France in 1856, with branches in Ireland and the Netherlands, and with residential headquarters in Tenafly since the 1940s. The priests spend much of their time in Africa. One of them, the Rev. Kevin Carroll, who was stationed in Nigeria for decades, holds a place in art history books.
"As a missionary, he was in the business of introducing and promoting new ideas to a host culture. But as someone with an interest in art - and the order has a history of such interest - he also felt compelled to preserve certain existing traditions. In a town called Oye Ekiti, he set up a workshop modeled on Yoruba prototypes, where young sculptors could train under master carvers. The project attracted major talent. The well-known sculptor Bandele of Osi Ilorin, son of the even more famous Areogun, was among the teachers. His apprentices included Lamidi Fakeye, who became an international star.
"Although religious conversion was not a prerequisite for joining the workshop, the Ekiti artists specialized in carving Christian images in Yoruba style, mostly for local churches. Meanwhile, as had been true for more than a century, priests were acquiring African art, old and new, and sending it to Europe and the United States.
"In 1964, Father Carroll commissioned Bandele to carve a set of four doors, with narrative reliefs melding biblical and Yoruba themes, for the Tenafly headquarters. They flank the entrance to the African Art Museum of the S.M.A. Fathers (the initials reflect the French version of the order's name), which consists of three modest galleries: a rotunda area and two short hallways.
"The small permanent collection has expanded considerably since 1996, when Robert J. Koenig, a retired director of the Montclair Art Museum, became its director and began attracting gifts from collectors. He has also mounted a series of ambitious loan shows. 'Surfaces: Color, Substances and Ritual Applications on African Sculpture' is the current one, and it's impressive.
"A manageable size at 60 pieces, it is well thought out, cleanly installed in the somewhat awkward circular space and accompanied by a solid catalog, to be printed later this year. In addition, it touches on at least one big, obvious subject - the use of color in African art - that has received little direct attention elsewhere.
"The show revolves around two main ideas. The first is that most African sculpture is conceived as spiritually and socially animated, and interactive, too. The second is that such vivacity is not intrinsic to a piece when it leaves the artist's hand. The work becomes alive and functional when ritually significant materials or substances are added to it, transforming a neutral image into a channel for supernatural forces.
"These enhancements take various forms that the curators - Donna Page, an art historian, and Leonard Kahan, a former art dealer - illustrate by grouping objects under descriptive categories like 'encrustation,' 'color,' 'patina' and 'multiple materials.' A catchall, 'multiple materials' contains disparate items like an Asante staff finial covered with gold leaf an Ejagham headpiece made from animal skin stretched over wood and a Kongo Nkisi, or 'power figure,' its body all but obscured by pounded-in nails and metal blades.
"The Nkisi is designed to be intimidatingly, even terrifyingly ugly: the point is to keep malign spirits on the run. And the surface of a Bamana object called a boli is comparably repellent, though in a different way. In this case, sacrificial offerings of crushed vegetable matter, earth and animal blood have been smeared over a core form to make a thick, fissured crust. The resulting object, with its dark and swollen but indeterminate shape, looks as tight with lethal energy as a ticking bomb.
"Attraction, however, is every bit as potent as repulsion in art and beauty, like unsightliness, is a surface attribute with profound implications. Mende masks from Liberia and Sierra Leone represent an ideal of human well-being. Dyed black, they are lavished with oils until their surfaces glow like healthy human skin. Ibeji twin figures, carved by Yoruba as substitutes for dead or absent children, are so lovingly coddled, bathed and anointed that their surfaces grow silky and their features are sometimes rubbed smooth.
"This obliteration through human touch is just one of several kinds of erosion the show documents. Disintegration from the effects of weather and insect depredation are others. Each reinforces the idea that the reality of material impermanence, which Western museums make every effort to arrest or even reverse, is a fact of life fully acknowledged by Africa's fundamentally organic, process-intensive aesthetic.
"Finally, there is the subject of applied color, to which fully half of the show is devoted. On the whole, the approach is formal, literally superficial, focused less on what colors mean than on where they come from, with samples of sources from powdered minerals, to vegetable oils and resins, to a laundry detergent used as a bluing agent, displayed in a single vitrine in the center of the gallery.
"In fact, African color symbolism, with its ethical, physiological and therapeutic implications, differs from its mainstream equivalent in the West. And while it has been addressed by various historians of African art, among them Henry John Drewal, Anita Jacobson-Widding, Allen Roberts, Victor Turner and, recently, Bolaji Campbell, it has yet to be awarded full-dress treatment by an American museum. This show is a step in that direction."
For information on the museum and future exhibits, call (201) 894-8611.
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