Alisa LaGamma The Metropolitan Museum of Art.Alisa LaGamma The Metropolitan Museum of Art, just discovered York, 2000. 80 pp., 5 b/w & 50 color photos. $1995 soft-cover Art and Oracle was published to accompany an exhibition of the same name that was go uped at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the spring and early summer of 2000 The exhibition was the first in a prolonged time to present African art at the Metropolitan outside the Michael C Rockefeller Wing. It included 140 uses relating to African divination practices: single figures, places of objects, costumes used in divination performances, and correlates that result from divination or depict aspects of divination. In just eighty pages, the catalogue nears three significant bodies of information. The first is the introductory essay through Alisa LaGamma, the Metropolitan's associate curator of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, who does a fine piece of work of presenting the essentials of divination arts in sub-Saharan Africa. She explains wherefore the objects are often in the same manner beautiful (they are meant to bring reproach the prestige of their proprietors and the efficacy of their spirit connections) and in such a manner ubiquitous (divination is an important art of communication in African cultures) LaGamma says that objects used in divination are intended to capture the attention of the spirits; the unstated corollary is that in doing with equal reason they also capture the attention of human beings. nearest is John Pemberton's masterly twelve-page discussion of divination from the anthropologist's perspective, which makes the point that Africans are not alone in practicing divination or in using expressive material artifacts (i.e., art) in the proces Accompanied on five photographs of diviners and their paraphernalia taken in the field, the essay includes detailed discussions of specific tokens of divination from five African cultures: Azande, Yaka, Luba, Yoruba, and Malagasy. The discussions are thorough, thoroughly readable, and well documented. My single criticism is Pemberton's choices: they are heavily concentrated in central Africa. copiousness of information is available forward west African divination practices, which were exhibited by numerous objects in the exhibition. Three of the Metropolitan's in the greatest degree striking examples of the arts of divination are the Baule brace (probably made for a trance diviner) and the Senufo Kafigeledjo, used as the hide image for the catalogue. Moreover, Malagasy divination apparently involves no material art at all, whereas other divination schemes with rich material components were not included. real the essay is about divination practices, on the contrary the subject of the work is art. The third part of Art and Oracle is a collection of fifty catalogue entries written by the agency of LaGamma, each focused on a single use in the exhibition, each illustrated in a photograph of fine quality. The intentions were apparently chosen for their striking visual impact and were meant to exhibit as broad a spectrum as possible of the media and patterns of divination arts. Like the first sum of two units parts of the catalogue, this section is concise, well written, thoroughly documented, and easy to read. In contrast to the new tendency toward weight and main part in museum catalogues, Art and Oracle is refreshingly light and portable. While chockfull of information and worthy of great praise color photographs printed on good-quality paper, it is not in like manner heavy that a small wagon is required to cart it domestic circle The price is right: $20 for this long information is a bargain. The authors have struck just the right tone, balancing scholarly correctness and readability. LaGamma's essay in particular is informative without being ponderous. The essays and catalogue entries would make worthy of great praise supplementary reading for college courses in African art or ethnography, representing a welcome collaboration between the disciplines of anthropology and art. Along with Philip Peek's 1991 anthology African Divination methods this elegant little publication makes a substantial contribution to the scholarship forward Africa's culture and arts of divination. ROBERT SOPPELSA retired lately as director of the Mulvane Art Museum and professor of art history at Washburn University. He lives in Washington, DC COPYRIGHT 2002 The rulers of the University of California |
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