Resonance from the Past:
African Sculpture from the New Orleans Museum of Art
3 February to 5 June 2005
Curated by Frank Herreman, formerly Deputy
Director for Exhibitions, MAA
Resonance from the Past
consists of over 94 works of art from the New
Orleans Museum of Art, including masks and figures, musical instruments,
ceramics, and fabric and beadwork costumes chosen from the extensive collection
of the museum by Frank Herreman, formerly Deputy Director for Exhibitions at
Museum for African Art. This exceptional selection is available because NOMA
will be rebuilding its African galleries until 2007 and would like to use this
period to make its collection better known. The exhibition includes all of the
best objects from the collection.
New Orleans is famous for
music, food, jazz funerals, Mardi Gras Indians, voodoo and other cults. It is
considered the most African of American cities, for these elements are linked to
the African origins of many of its inhabitants. New Orleans is also considered
the birthplace of jazz, perhaps the most influential expression of African
American culture. When NOMA decided to actively collect works of art from
sub-Saharan Africa about forty years ago, it was motivated by the centuries old
connection between New Orleans and Africa, and by the feeling that for this
reason New Orleans deserved an important collection of African art. A sub-text
of this exhibition will be to compare formal elements of jazz and African
sculpture in order to illuminate the aesthetic connections between them. In the
catalogue, Professor Robert Farris Thompson of Yale, the leading authority on
African survivals in African American culture, will discuss the affinities
between African art, American heritage and jazz. In addition, several famous
jazz musicians will discuss their impressions of African art and its
relationship to jazz.
The exhibition will present
works from west and central Africa. It includes important groups of sculpture
from the Dogon and Bamana peoples of Mali, a selection of figures and masks of
the Dan, We and Bete people of Ivory Coast, which run the gamut from idealistic
to expressionistic forms, and Akan sculpture from the Baule and Asante people. A
highlight of the show will be the outstanding collection of Yoruba art used in
ceremonies of the Ogboni, Gelede, Ifa and Epa cults. The collection includes
major works by the celebrated sculptors Olowe of Ise and Areogun as well as
dazzling examples of beadwork. Other works from Nigeria come from the kingdom of
Benin and from the Igbo and Ijo peoples.
From equatorial Africa come a
royal mask and figure from the Cameroon Grasslands, three major Fang reliquary
figures, and works of the Punu and Lumbo. The exhibition concludes with a series
of works from peoples who live in the Congo basin. They include ancestor and
power figures, in wood and ivory, from the Bembe, Teke and Yombe. The exhibition
concludes dramatically with figures from the Chokwe, Luba and Tabwa peoples of
Angola.
related articles:
ALBUBERQUE
African Creativity, More About the Momentary Than the Monumental
The magic of SAMA's
Resonance from the Past is in its everyday spirituality
Long-Island
New Tribal art Museum relocation
UBS-art-gallery Ibedji-NYC
