aesthetics and the body politic || african art

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African Art Africa: The Art of a Continent by Kwame Anthony Appiah; Henry Louis Gates,; Peter Garlake; Africa: The Art of a Continent, 100 Works of Power and Beauty by Kwame Anthony Appiah; Ekpo Eyo; Peter Mark; Henry Louis Gates,; Suzanne Preston Blier Review by: Christa Clarke Art Journal, Vol. 56, No. 1, Aesthetics and the Body Politic (Spring, 1997), pp. 82-87 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777790 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 09:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.34.79.79 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 09:48:22 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Aesthetics and the Body Politic || African Art

African ArtAfrica: The Art of a Continent by Kwame Anthony Appiah; Henry Louis Gates,; PeterGarlake; Africa: The Art of a Continent, 100 Works of Power and Beauty by Kwame AnthonyAppiah; Ekpo Eyo; Peter Mark; Henry Louis Gates,; Suzanne Preston BlierReview by: Christa ClarkeArt Journal, Vol. 56, No. 1, Aesthetics and the Body Politic (Spring, 1997), pp. 82-87Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777790 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 09:48

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.79 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 09:48:22 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Aesthetics and the Body Politic || African Art

African Art CHRISTA CLARKE

Africa: The Art of a Continent. Preface by Cornel West. Introduction by Tom Phillips. Essays by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Peter Garlake. Lon- don: Royal Academy of Arts, 1995. Distr. Prestel, New York. 620 pp.; 801 color ills., 53 b/w. $75.00

Africa: The Art of a Continent, 100 Works

of Power and Beauty. Introduction by Cor- nel West. Essays by Kwame Anthony Appi- ah, Ekpo Eyo, Peter Mark, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Suzanne Preston Blier. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1996. Distr. Harry N. Abrams, New York. 191 pp.; 100 color ills., 10 b/w. $39.95; $24.95 paper

Exhibition schedule: Royal Academy of Arts, London, October 4, 1995-January 21, 1996; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, March

1-May 1, 1996; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, June 7-September 29, 1996.

ver since objects from Africa first attracted the attention of modernist artists at the beginning of this cen-

tury, museums and galleries devoted to

avant-garde expression have played a piv- otal role in legitimizing African material culture as an art form for Western audi- ences. As early as 1914, Alfred Stieglitz championed the aesthetic merits of African sculpture at his Gallery 291 in New York through installations that high- lighted form over ethnographic content. The appreciation of African artifacts as art gained more widespread acceptance in 1935 when the Museum of Modern Art mounted African Negro Art, curated by James Johnson Sweeney. This exhibition introduced objects from sub-Saharan Africa to a larger museum-going public and, in the process, established a canon of "classic" African art. While an entire field devoted to the examination of these works on their own terms quickly developed fol-

lowing the 1935 show, modernism has continued to mediate public perception of and interest in African art through exhibi- tions such as the MoMA's controversial

Primitivism in 20th-Century Art of 1984. It seems fitting, then, that toward the close of the century, a modernist institution has

again approached the subject, this time

attempting "the first major survey of the artistic traditions of the entire continent."1

Africa: The Art of the Continent

opened in New York in June 1996 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, pre- senting over 500 works of art from muse- ums and private collections throughout the world. Originating at the Royal Academy in London, the exhibition, which made its debut there in October 1995, was con- ceived and curated by Tom Phillips, a British painter, collector of African art, and Royal Academician. Phillips's objec- tive in organizing the exhibition was to

present African art as an aesthetic equal to that of the West. The resulting show was

astonishingly broad in scope, stressing not

only the chronological depth of African artistic expression but also a geographical range encompassing the entire continent. At the Guggenheim-the show's sole American venue-the exhibition practi- cally filled the building with a host of stun-

ning works, some familiar and others exhibited for the first time. While the installation itself encouraged an aesthetic

appreciation of the objects, didactic labels and contextual photographs provided a cultural framework for African art. Unfor-

tunately, these two strategies of display- the aesthetic and the contextual-were never integrated into the conceptual struc- ture of the show overall and ultimately the conflict between them undermined the

larger aims of this ambitious exhibition. The story behind the conception

and execution of Africa: The Art of a Con- tinent is at least as complex as the exhibi- tion itself, revealing the delicate ethical, political, and social issues involved in the

display of African art. Phillips's initial selection of objects for the London show raised concerns about issues of African cultural patrimony, resulting in the last- minute deletion of many works scheduled to be in the exhibition. The loan of antiq- uities from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, for example, was barred by Islamic funda-

mentalists who won a court order prohibit- ing religious treasures from leaving the

country. The Royal Academy had also

planned to exhibit a sizable number of undocumented terra-cotta antiquities from the Inland Niger Delta region of Mali, an area particularly vulnerable to illegal excavations. Under pressure from the British Museum, which threatened to withdraw all its loans, the Academy was forced to exclude the Malian terra-cottas from the show. Still, many of the exhibi- tion's critics were dismayed to find these contested pieces published in the cata-

logue along with other works of question- able source, including objects from the Nok and Cross River regions in Nigeria.

When it opened to the public in London, Africa: The Art of a Continent drew additional criticism for the strategies of display employed by Phillips in the installation. The over 800 objects, illumi- nated by spotlights in dimly lit rooms, were presented in a minimalist fashion that emphasized the aesthetic. Although works were grouped by culture and geo- graphic region, the identifying labels pro- vided little information and were difficult to associate with the individual objects. Phillips defended his "decontextualiza- tion" of the objects in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue, arguing that "the

very test of what we call art is its capacity to survive independently of a context it can never revisit" (p. 20). Many, however, found this approach problematic. African- ist art historian Roy Sieber, emeritus pro- fessor at Indiana University who later served as an advisor for the Guggenheim venue, was among those who criticized the London installation. "To put an object on a pedestal, light it and walk away is not

helpful," Sieber noted. "There should be more information to teach us about the

people and remind us that any choice we make about African art is based on West- ern values. In this sense, Tom [Phillips] is

undoing 50 years of art studies by claim-

ing, like Roger Fry, 'Don't give me facts, just let me look at the object.' "2

Despite the controversial nature of the exhibition, the Guggenheim decided

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FIG. 1 Overview of the exhibition Africa: The Art of a Continent at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

to host the show, their third exhibition to focus on art outside the context of Europe and America. (The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., had initially expressed an interest in taking the show but later declined.) Jay Levenson, deputy director for program administration at the

Guggenheim and coordinator of the exhi- bition in New York, explained the rele- vance of the subject to the museum's mission to exhibit contemporary art: "African art played so critical a role in the

development of the Modernist aesthetic that it has always been appreciated by the audience for 20th-century art."3 The venue has special historical resonance

given the founding of the museum by Peggy Guggenheim, herself an early col- lector of African art. Levenson also stressed the local appeal of the exhibition to a New York audience and, in particu- lar, its interest to such African-American intellectuals as Cornel West, a Guggen- heim board member and a contributor to both the London and New York exhibition

publications. In taking the show, however, the

Guggenheim made significant modifica- tions to the original exhibition as present- ed at the Royal Academy. While the London exhibition was largely a product of Phillips's artistic vision, the Guggen-

heim solicited the active participation of an advisory committee of Africanist art historians to adapt the exhibition to its New York venue. Chaired by Michael Kan of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the com- mittee included Ekpo Eyo of the Universi-

ty of Maryland; Frank Herreman of the Museum for African Art, New York; Dominique Malaquais, a doctoral candi- date at Columbia University; Peter Mark of Wesleyan University; and Edna Russ- man, a specialist in the art of ancient

Egypt-in addition to Roy Sieber. This committee scaled down the size of the exhibition, selecting less than half of the 800 works exhibited at the Royal Acade-

my and adding nearly 150 new works from American public and private collections. While maintaining the geographical ori- entation of the original show, members of the advisory committee opted for thematic arrangements within the existing divisions instead of grouping objects by culture. And although the Royal Academy cata-

logue remains the official record for the exhibition, the Guggenheim published a

200-page handbook, Africa: The Art of a Continent, 100 Works of Power and Beau- ty, that highlights a selection of works from each section, many of which were

unique to the New York venue. This pub- lication also contains new essays by com-

mittee members Ekpo Eyo and Peter Mark, and by Suzanne Blier, professor of African art history at Harvard University. An introduction by Cornel West and com- mentaries by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., originally pub- lished in the London catalogue, were also included. Noticeably missing from the

Guggenheim handbook were the contribu- tions of curator Tom Phillips, who wrote the introduction to and edited the London

catalogue. Although the shift in curatorial

direction at the Guggenheim was appar- ently intended to minimize Phillips's aes-

theticizing philosophy, the installation itself maintained an emphasis on the visu- al impact of African artistic expression. The exhibition design, by Adeboyega Adefope and W. Rod Faulds, used the curvilinear and angled architecture of the dramatic Frank Lloyd Wright building to both harmonize and contrast with the three-dimensional aspects of the objects. This was clearly a show about sculpture, a curatorial preference manifest by merely gazing across at the figural works facing out from the spiraling ramp (fig. 1). At the same time, the Guggenheim evidently rec-

ognized the difficulties of presenting African art on a purely formal level in this more culturally sensitive era. Directly

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FIG. 2 Statue of Senkamenisken, King of Kush, 643-623 B.C., granite, 577/8 inches high, from Nubia (Sudan), Gebel Barkal. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

addressing the political and aesthetic ramifications of displaying African objects in a Western museum context from the start, a wall text introducing the exhibi- tion read: "As with all exhibitions, this exploration of the arts of the African con- tinent is a construction. It reflects the ideas and attitudes-aesthetic, historical, and cultural-of the curators who select- ed and organized the works of arts and the scholars who composed the explanatory labels and captions." This self-conscious

approach to museum display, absent from the initial exhibition, was coupled with a greater emphasis on the context and con- tent of the objects themselves throughout the installation. Thematic groupings demonstrated a variety of approaches to African art, including sociocultural (dis- cussion of the use of masks in initiation rituals), iconographic (exploration of the mother-and-child figures in various cul- tures), and stylistic (abstraction in South African headrests). Visual complements to the works were provided by large color and black-and-white photographs show-

ing African art in its indigenous contexts. The museum also produced an education- al acoustic program that offered detailed information for fifty-six works in the exhi- bition as well as a selection of music from the various regions.

Unfortunately, the Guggenheim failed to integrate this contextual informa- tion in a lucid and structured manner, resulting in an awkward dichotomy between form and content throughout the installation. To understand the thematic arrangements, the visitor was asked to make connections between disparate (and likely unfamiliar) objects by reading indi- vidual labels that attempted to establish a continuous narrative throughout the show. Certainly some of the thematic groupings may have been apparent to the casual vis- itor, such as the section focusing on vari- ous roles of female figures. Most, however, were less obvious, like the assemblage of works exploring the more esoteric idea of an object's ability to create and define an architectural space. Given the scale of this show, one wonders if any thematic organization could have been sustained no matter how clearly articulated. Still, the audience would have profited from explicit introductions to the thematic sec- tions, perhaps through didactic wall texts, as the labels themselves presented excit- ing and even challenging approaches to African art. The visual material also pro- vided little insight into indigenous frame- works for African art, due largely to its marginal placement throughout the instal- lation. Contextual photographs were rele- gated to the hallways between sections and in the corridors leading to the restrooms, when their purpose would have been better served had they been integrat- ed with the objects. The schism between the two approaches to display was per- haps most evident in the acoustic pro- gram, which offered a choice of either object or context for the selected works in the exhibition.

While the Guggenheim's installa- tion strategies differed from those of the London venue, a guiding principle of the exhibition remained the chronological depth of African artistic expression. This theme was introduced in a "prologue" immediately following the entrance that featured a series of ancient hand axes from southern and eastern Africa. The oldest artifact in this section-and in the entire exhibition-was the "Olduwan core" (Royal Academy cat. 2.1), a smoothed and rounded piece of quartzite found in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and dating to 1.6-1.7 million B.C. While given an aesthetic spin in the accompany-

ing label ("The workmanship of some examples . . . so exceeds functional requirements as to suggest an aesthetic sensibility"), the relevance of these arti- facts to an exhibition devoted to artistic expression is questionable. The focus on history initiated in the prologue was underscored throughout the exhibition with the placement of antiquities first in each of seven geographic sections. Although careful attention was obviously paid to the dating and placement of these historical works, dates were rarely provid- ed for the remaining objects in the show, many of which were clearly no older than a century. The selective nature of this chronological approach intimated that African art is an art of the past, a common misperception that was further reinforced by the absence of contemporary African artistic expression in the exhibition. The omission of contemporary African art was all the more surprising given Suzanne Blier's catalogue essay, "Enduring Myths of African Art," in which she observed, "Scant attention is paid to recent and con- temporary African art, because this art does not conform to primal typologies or expectations and because, in many cir- cles, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it is believed that artistic production in Africa has long since come to a standstill" (p. 27). At a press confer- ence preceding the opening of the show, the issue was addressed by Jay Levenson who stated that the Guggenheim was plan- ning a major exhibition devoted to con- temporary African art in the near future.

Along with an emphasis on Africa's history, an additional objective of the exhibition was an attempt to move beyond the idea of African art as defined by race. Subverting a long-standing division between northern and sub-Saharan Africa, the exhibition embraced the arts of the entire continent. The geographical orientation of the installation began with "Ancient Egypt and Nubia" and proceed- ed to "Eastern Africa," "South Africa," "Central Africa," "Sahel and Savanna," "Northern Africa," and "West Africa and the Guinea Coast" as the show circled to the top of the building. The inclusion of the arts of northern Africa in a major sur- vey of African art was easily the most sig- nificant contribution of this exhibition. In his catalogue essay, "Putting Northern Africa Back into Africa," Ekpo Eyo elo- quently expressed the difficulties in over- coming this long-standing ideological obstacle:

The idea that northwestern Africa and Egypt are not part of Africa has gained

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FIG. 3 Grave figures from eastern Africa.

such wide acceptance that when the Royal Academy of Arts in London contemplated mounting the exhibition Africa: The Art of a Continent, it had first to justify the inclu- sion of the arts of northwestern Africa and

Egypt in an exhibition dedicated to the continent as a whole. That it decided to do so was for me a triumph for truth and com- mon sense. This is an unprecedented exhi- bition and, hopefully, one that willfoster the necessary changes in the way that peo- ple look at the continent, its history and its arts (p. 9).

The geographic and evolutionary justifica- tion for considering the continent as a whole provided by Eyo in the catalogue was complemented by Peter Mark's essay, "Historical Contacts and Cultural Interac- tion," which summarized the extensive

history of cultural and artistic exchanges among Africa, the Muslim world, and southern Europe.

The sections devoted to the arts of northern Africa were illustrative of such themes, emphasizing artistic interaction both within and beyond the continent. In the section on ancient Egypt and Nubia, for example, there was a concerted effort to give equal weight to Nubia, a culture

historically overshadowed by its neighbor Egypt. Alluding to active cultural inter-

change between the two regions, a 7th-

century B.C. statue of the Nubian king Senkamenisken (fig. 2; Guggenheim cat.

12), unique to the New York exhibition, showed the ruler in Egyptian pose and costume but with a traditional Kushite headdress, reflecting his ancestral ties to the Kushite kings who had also ruled

Egypt. Throughout the section, the curato- rial selections eschewed the monumental

grandeur of Egyptian art in favor of small- er and less familiar works. A rare example of early Egyptian three-dimensional art was a door socket in the form of a bound

prisoner dating to 3100 B.C. (Guggenheim cat. 3; Royal Academy cat. 1.24). Many of the objects included in the exhibition were intended for personal use, such as the New Kingdom wooden headrest in the

shape of a hare (Royal Academy cat.

1.53), whose form is strikingly similar to those used in a number of sub-Saharan African cultures.

A diversity of cultural and artistic traditions was especially visible in the northern Africa section, which contained not only early Carthaginian works created under Phoenician and then Roman rule, but also an array of Muslim objects from later periods. Reflecting the region's com-

plex history, a Moroccan gravestone (Royal Academy cat. 7.19) inscribed in Arabic to a 13th-century Marinid sultan reuses a Roman stela from the 3rd to 4th

century. Of note as well is a richly illumi- nated Mamluk Qur'an from 1305

(Guggenheim cat. 98; Royal Academy cat.

7.55), by the celebrated calligrapher Ibn

al-Wahid, an exceptionally beautiful work and the earliest dated example of its type. The section also included a number of

objects by nomadic artists who once dom- inated trade routes across the Sahara, illustrating again the ties between north- ern and sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition to the inclusion of northern African artistic expression, the exhibition's organizers should also be commended for their attempt to give greater recognition to the arts of eastern and southern Africa. Historically, these

regions have been underrepresented in Western museum collections, which typi- cally reflect early preferences for figural works from western and central Africa. With the gradual breaking down of West- ern distinctions between art and artifact, items of personal adornment and utilitari- an objects-more commonly seen in east- ern and southern Africa-have entered the realm of artistic appreciation. In the eastern Africa section, the exhibition included an elaborately beaded Iraqw skirt from Tanzania (Guggenheim cat. 20; Royal Academy cat. 2.41) as well as a selection of basketry and headrests from the region. The primary emphasis in this section, however, remained the human form: the exhibition design, for example, dramatically positioned a series of Konso and Bongo grave figures, accentuating their attenuated features (fig. 3). Of these

figural works, the pair of funerary figures

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FIG. 4 Lydenburg Head, ca. A.D. 500-700, clay, pigment, and specularite, 15 x 101/4 x 10 inches, from eastern Transvaal, South Africa. University of Cape Town Collection, South African Museum.

by a Vezo artist from Madagascar (Guggen- heim cats. 24 and 25; Royal Academy cats. 2.31a and b) was particularly striking for its haunting sculptural presence rein- forced by extensive weathering and dra- matic abrasions of sand.

Many pieces from South Africa were exhibited here for the first time, since Western institutions were previous- ly unwilling to accept loans from South Africa under apartheid. A highlight of this section was the famed Lydenburg Head (fig. 4; Guggenheim cat. 31; Royal Academy cat. 3.10a-b), never before seen in the United States. Among the ear- liest known sculptural forms in southern Africa, the terra-cotta heads date from A.D. 500 to 700. Some of the more recent works exhibited reflect the decades of political upheaval and dislocation in the region. Beadwork created by Ndebele female artists, for instance, encodes mes- sages of social protest in abstract, geo-

metric designs. In the exhibition, the del- icate appearance of a beaded train, or nyoka (Royal Academy cat. 3.35c), belied its power as a means of communicating Ndebele cultural identity in the face of

oppression. Other forms of personal adornment demonstrated the inventive resourcefulness of artists with limited access to traditional media. A pair of Zulu earrings (Guggenheim cat. 43D; Royal Academy cat. 3.36d) translates abstract designs usually created in ivory or horn into the more recent media of

vinyl used in flooring. Dating to the 1950s, these earplugs are also the most contemporary objects included in the entire show.

While the exhibition was expansive in its inclusion of the arts of the entire continent, the areas central to the estab- lished canon of "African art"-central Africa, the Sahel and Savanna, and west- ern Africa-clearly dominated the show.

Their prominence was underscored by the organization of the installation itself, which featured those sections (in addition to eastern Africa) in clear view on the ramp, while north Africa, Egypt and Nubia, and southern Africa were relegated to adjoining galleries in the Monitor and Tower buildings. Beginning with the cen- tral Africa section, figural works whose forms are more familiar to Western audi- ences were highlighted. For instance, the exhibition included a large number of minkisi, or power figures, embellished with nails, feathers, or other ritual additions, which are found in various cultures throughout coastal and southern Zaire. Some effort was made, however, to repre- sent a range of objects in a variety of media. In addition to textiles by Kuba and Kongo artists from Zaire, this section fea- tured an unusual Solongo stela (Royal Academy cat. 4.15) that, at over two feet in height, is one of the largest bas-relief carv- ings found outside the Nilotic cultures.

The section devoted to Sahel and Savanna, with just over forty works dis- played, was the smallest of the geograph- ically oriented divisions and, in content, the weakest. The section opened promis- ingly with unusual antiquities, such as a 7th-century megalith from Mali and 10th- to-16th-century terra-cottas from the Sao culture complex in northern Nigeria and Chad. Overall, however, the regional rep- resentation was heavily weighted toward the Dogon of Mali, a people whose art and culture have fascinated Westerners ever since Marcel Griaule's initial anthropo- logical study during the 1930s. While Dogon sculpture filled two divisions with- in this section, objects from Burkina Faso were largely overlooked, a serious omis- sion in a survey exhibition. Also missing (for good reason) were the controversial Inland Niger Delta antiquities. Their absence was candidly addressed in the wall text leading to this section, which noted: "A host of brilliant terra-cottas and metal sculptures known from this area have for the most part been illicitly excavated and are consequently not included in this exhibition."

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Circling to the top of the building, "West Africa and the Guinea Coast" was undoubtedly the crowning glory of the exhibition. Antiquities from present-day Nigeria were prominently represented and included an ample display of the well-known metalwork from the kingdom of Benin as well as a number of Esie soapstone figures (12th-15th centuries), less familiar to museum audiences. Mas- terpieces from the collections of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria highlighted this section. Among these was the so-called Dinya Head (Guggenheim cat. 57; Royal Academy cat. 6.47), a magnificent life- size terra-cotta head that originally was part of a larger figure. Unearthed acci- dentally by a tin miner in 1954, the head belongs to a corpus of fragmentary terra- cottas, dated 500 B.C. to A.D. 200, from a civilization known as the Nok culture located in present-day Nigeria. The rich artistic traditions of Ife, a Yoruba civi- lization established around 1100, were also well represented. Of particular note is the famed Tada figure, a spectacular representation of a seated male dating from the 13th to 14th century (Guggen- heim cat. 60; Royal Academy cat. 5.64). Made of pure copper using the lost-wax method of casting, this large, naturalistic figure is sensitively rendered with careful attention paid to details of dress.

While rich in uncontested master- pieces of African art, "West Africa and the Guinea Coast" was particularly marked by scant visual reference to the indigenous framework for these objects, an absence that affected the entire exhi- bition. The section featured a variety of masks, an artistic tradition found in numerous cultures throughout sub-Saha- ran Africa, which demonstrated an aston- ishing range of stylistic, iconographic, and functional diversity. Unfortunately, none of the masks were displayed in their entirety, which would typically include a full-body covering as well as other embellishments to the sculpted head- piece. A few color photographs placed in the hallways provided the only glimpses

of the incredible aesthetic experience of African masquerades. In another part of the installation, architectural works from various West African cultures were grouped together to explore the public functions of African sculpture. Again, though the object labels attempted to contextualize the works, the massive pil- lars and door frames lost considerable visual impact without a sense of their original setting.

Despite such problems in display, visitors to the exhibition were offered a chance to view a vast range of works, many magnificent, that together demon- strated the aesthetic power of African artistic expression. The opportunity to come face to face with some of the greatest masterpieces from the entire continent was the show's supreme achievement. Yet at the same time, Africa: The Art of a Conti- nent was a superficial exhibition-per- haps necessarily so given the enormity of its undertaking-providing little under- standing of the traditions and beliefs of Africa's richly diverse artistic heritage. While there were admirable attempts to introduce contextual background for the objects in the New York venue, these contributions were introduced in opposi- tion to, instead of integrated with, the exhibition's primary focus on aesthetics. Ultimately, the exhibition relied upon the audiences' perceptions-and preconcep- tions-of African art to guide them through this continental survey. As noted by Kwame Appiah in his catalogue essay "Why Africa? Why Art?" "What unites these objects as African, in short, is not a shared nature, not the shared character of the cultures from which they came, but our own ideas of Africa" (p. 7). Sounding remarkably similar to early modernist approaches to non-Western art, Appiah's assertion is all the more alarming given the long-standing history of misinterpre- tation of African art, both unconscious and deliberate.

Admirable in intent, Africa: The Art of a Continent was, in the end, unsuc- cessful in execution, having had a supreme opportunity to not only educate

newcomers to African art but also stimu- late critical debate within the field. New York audiences regularly have access to survey installations of African art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, both of which feature recently renovated galleries. Additional- ly, a number of provocatively focused exhibitions over the past decade or so have introduced museum visitors to alter- native and/or indigenous ways of looking at and thinking about African art and cul- ture. (Such installations do not necessari- ly preclude a consideration of aesthetics; for example, the recent exhibition Memo- ry: Luba Art and the Making of History, curated by Mary Nooter Roberts for the Museum for African Art, is a model exam- ple of the integration of form and content in the display of African art.) While the Guggenheim has clearly paved the way for a broader consideration of African artistic expression in its inclusion of the arts of the entire continent, the aesthetic imperative guiding Africa: The Art of a Continent is not fundamentally different from that of the 1935 Museum of Modern Art show. More than sixty years after that exhibition introduced African art into Western art historical discourse, the nature of this discourse has, unfortunate- ly, not been advanced by this current exhibition. In spite of the Guggenheim's efforts to rectify the flawed and problem- atic exhibition it inherited from London, the show's genuine contributions are buried amid its retrogressive premise. As we approach the 21st century, we no longer need to repeat history on a larger scale but rather to direct our energies at effecting radically new approaches to the display of non-Western arts.

Notes 1. Press release from the Solomon R. Guggenheim

Museum, New York, May 15, 1996. 2. Quoted in Steven Vincent, "Out of Africa," Art

and Auction, May 1996, 127. 3. Personal communication, July 30, 1996.

CHRISTA CLARKE, a 1996-97 Kress Foundation Fellow, is completing her dissertation, "Defining Taste: Albert Barnes and the Promotion of African Art in the United States," at the University of Maryland.

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