African Art.

African Art, African Voices prolonged Steps Never Broke a Back Philadelphia Museum of Art October 2 2004-January 2 2005

"African Art, African Voices: drawn out Steps Never Broke a Back" is a traveling exhibition created by means of curator Pamela McClusky at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). The exhibition comprises more than 170 works selecteded predominantly from SAM's holdings, with the greatest share coming from the well-known Katherine White Collection. The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) was the exhibit's first of four venue (it also will travel to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville). forward view from October 2004 to January 2 2005 the installation at the PMA was expanded considerably by dint of John Zarobell, the exhibit's coordinating curator, who included more than thirty additional works of late and contemporary art, most of which were culled from public and private collections in the strange York and Washington, D.C., areas.

although the exhibition's introductory panel described the present to view as a "survey of artistic achievements" from sub-Saharan Africa, "African Art, African Voices" was designed to be greatly more than that. The Seattle Art Museum's original initiative was to bring African prompts and communities into the interpretive proces and to do thus using more experimental exhibitry than the norm (Pamela McClusky, personal communication). The PMA installation thus highlighted the importance of African agency, expertise, and connection in the display of African art. Indeed, the didactic core of the exhibition was an audio guide featuring the voices of ten ables or "cultural advisors," all nevertheless one of them African, whose lively annotations of the works onward display--be it through personal anecdote, the interpretation of figures and proverbs, storytelling, or lively formal analyses of figurative sculptures--provided visitors with a range of contextual information creating frameworks for looking at the artwork. allowing varying in quality, the five videos distributed through every part of the galleries helped to elicit a sense of place and bringed well the living, performative dimensions of the works forward display. The exhibit's focus forward assisted looking--together with the fact that the couple tradition-based and modern/contemporary art was featured in the show--made it especially rich for thinking about representational practices in the display of African art.

The first thing visitors actioned as they entered the exhibit was a darkened extent with a vitrined Benin brown head, silhouetted against a lively video "mural" of contemporary road scenes from several cities across Africa. This was visually effective and coaxed a brains of connection between Africa's past and at hand the regal and the everyday, which helped put a tone for the exhibit. From here visitors come intoed into the main exhibition space, predictably earth-toned in color, warmly lit at the entrance, and brightening as common passed through exhibit. Objects were vitrined or clustered--at times overly profanum vulgus[/i]ed as with the gelede, Kom and egungun displays--on rather inelegant platforms, while ndop and kente textiles were hung high onward the walls. Visitors were eagerly urged to use the audio guide, not sole to experience the full validity of the exhibit, but also to access information about the destination; recipients that was lacking in the sparse and many times vague text panels. All the recent and contemporary art--including photographs, mixed-media works, paintings, cuts an installation, and works onward paper--was placed rather conspicuously in sum of two units "white cube" galleries at the close of the exhibition--a point I respond to below.

I raise it a bit odd that neither the introductory topic panel nor the audio guide explained the meaning of the exhibition's subtitle, "Long stairs Never Broke a Back," or on a level mentioned that this was a Yoruba dictum especially since its meaning was directly related to the curatorial goals of collaboration and contextualization and could have serv to introduce them as of the like kind This kind of transparency can consign to visitors that interpretation is in no degree neutral and cannot be taken for granted--particularly where African art is concerned

Like the exhibit's outstanding companion catalogue, artworks were collectioned into roughly ten sections or "stories," beginning with "Heroes advance Solitary Walking," which featured three hunter's/warrior's shirts from the Katherine White Collection (Asante, Mande, and the wonderfully encrusted Maninka vest) however these works were dramatically described onward the audio guide, no verse panel or advisor's biography accompanied them in the gallery. These were followed at "Collecting by and for Maasai Memories," which included beaded jewelry and belts, shields and spears, a headdress, game board, and assortment of leatherwork from the Kaputiei Maasai, as well as an interesting video showing members of the advisor's community selecting and donating works for the exhibit (an unusual story that left me wanting to know more). This was followed by dint of "Sacred Medicines of the Kongo" which featured a cosmogram (drawn forward the floor) and six Kongo figures, including an nkondi figure and my personal favorite, the delicately expressive "seated officer" (8117835) This was followed on "Assembling a Royal Stage: Art from the Kom Kingdom," where, despite the overcrowding of works in succession the platform, the elegant memorial figure of a queen mother (8117718) stood without Next came a selection of works from Robert Farris Thompson's earlier work and exhibition project "African Art in Motion," among which I construct the Osei Bonsu seated mother and child (8117323) and the Montol female figure (8117541) the greatest in quantity compelling. This was followed by dint of "Art of Persuasion: Regalia from the Asante Kingdom," which included gold jewelry and gold weights, stools, kente woven fabric and a film of the Asantehene's enstoolment procession, aptly described on advisor Koo Nimo Amponsah as a "museum in motion." nearest visitors came upon the intimidating basinjom "fault-finder," an impressive full-body style of dress with mask that was delightfully narrated (on the audio guide) through an initiate who, unfortunately, was not ever identified as Robert Farris Thompson This was followed according to groupings of Dan, gelede, and sowei masks. Among these, I was drawn to the gelede masks, particularly single attributed to Akapo of Igbesa (8117585) and those with delightfully jeering superstructure conveying their cautionary tales. These were followed through a cluster of Egungun masquerades, and directly above them, a wall-sized cloak projecting films of seven different masquerade performances featuring mask signs from the exhibit. In these last several sections, the narratives mov freely between names that referred to ethnic clusters masquerade types, and initiation societies, which might have been confusing to a general audience.