African Art at the Expanded CMA in 2010

In anticipation of another temporary exhibition on one of the many facets of the arts of Africa, I do look forward to the pleasure of welcoming you back to the Cleveland Museum of Art to view our new permanent gallery of African art in the summer of 2010. Located on the lower level of the refurbished 1916 building, adjacent to the gallery devoted to the arts of Ancient Egypt, our African gallery will house approximately 75 keywords from our museum’s holdings.

Among these will be a number of the famous works which our institution received from the late Katherine C. White in the 1960s and 70s, one of America’s pioneering collectors of African art. These include our bushcow mask from the Bwa people of Burkina Faso. The CMA is also the proud owner of a handful of works in brass and ivory from the Kingdom of Benin in Nigeria, including an altar head tentatively dated to the mid 16th or early 17th century which was included in a historic exhibition of Benin art which we hosted in 1938.

However, aside from these old friends – which are all featured in my publication South of the Sahara: Selected Works of African Art (Cleveland, 2003) – our future gallery of African art will also present a dozen or more new acquisitions in addition to the magnificent Janus-shaped staff from the Luba people included in Art and Power. Some of these new works, which entered our collection since the closing of the old African gallery in 2005, have been illustrated in our museum’s Members Magazine. They include a helmet mask from the Mandinka people of Mali (vol. 46, no. 2), a female statuette in ivory from the Lega people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (vol. 46, no. 7), and a bead-covered leopard stool from the Kingdom of Bandjoun in Cameroon (vol. 47, no. 5/6).

I sincerely hope that your visit of Art and Power will entice you to return to the Cleveland Museum of Art to come and admire the intellectual and aesthetic riches of our own collection of sub-Saharan art, which as said has been significantly enriched with new acquisitions since it was last accessible to the public, when we reopen the lower level of our museum’s 1916 building in June 2010.

Costa

*Please visit the Cleveland Museum of Art’s ‘Summer of CMA‘ blog to get all the details on the museum’s East Wing Opening Celebration!

Myths of African Art

Yesterday was the closing day of our exhibition Art and Power in the Central African Savanna. Although I am somewhat sad to see the gathered works of art – many of which had previously not been exhibited on this side of the Atlantic – leave Cleveland, I am delighted to share the exhibition with a new audience in San Francisco where it will be on view at the de Young Museum from June 20 through October 11.

We are happy to report that the attendance of the exhibition surpassed our expectations. On behalf of the Cleveland Museum of Art, I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to thank you for your interest and support. It has been a great pleasure for me personally to meet many of you during one of my countless tours and lectures. I sincerely appreciate your insightful comments and pertinent questions and I look forward to continuing the dialogue in the future.

Aside from the visual and emotional impact of the works grouped in the exhibition, I also hope that Art and Power in the Central African Savanna has revealed some aspects of the arts of sub-Saharan Africa our visitors may not have been familiar with. Among other things, it may have indicated that contrary to popular belief African art did and does NOT exist outside of the realm of time and that, like elsewhere in the world, it has always been influenced by changes in society at large. It must also be clear that African objects and styles traveled over time and spaces as a result of migrations and long-distance trade. Also, African works of art like those included in Art and Power have been produced and used by true civilizations of great complexity and diversity and are ultimately the creations of individual, often inventive artists with specialized knowledge and having enjoyed lengthy and in-depth training.

In fact, if you are interested in learning more about this, you should know that the many myths and misconceptions that have until recently impeded the appreciation and understanding of the arts of sub-Saharan Africa are discussed in an enlightening way by the reputed art historian Suzanne Preston Blier, a professor at Harvard University, in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition ‘Africa: The Art of the Continent,’ presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 1996. This title and many other relevant publications on African art are on course readily available at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s excellent Ingalls Library.

Costa