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Traditional Arts of Africa Explored in New Exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum
This fall, the Princeton University Art Museum presents Life Objects: Rites of Passage in African Art, an exhibition featuring twenty-three superb works from The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution; the Princeton University Art Museum; and private collections, which focuses on the conjunction of art, religion, and ritual in key phases of the human life cycle in indigenous African societies. Life Objects makes apparent how the course of birth-death-reincarnation, and the interactions of humans, spirits, gods, and ancestors were made manifest through art. The formal eloquence and the stunning range of styles and media of the “life objects” also testify to the diversity of artistic traditions and individual creativity in traditional African societies. Life Objects will be on view September 12, 2009 through January 24, 2010.
This exhibition, organized by Chika Okeke-Agulu, assistant professor of art and archaeology and African American studies, Princeton University, and Holly W. Ross, with the assistance of art and archaeology graduate student Adedoyin Teriba, is presented in conjunction with the freshman seminar “Art and the Lifecycle in Africa,” which will be offered in fall of 2009 by the Center for the Study of Religion and the Department of Art and Archeology.
The organic and active interconnection between the living and the dead, between humans and spiritual entities, and the cyclical path linking the natural and metaphysical worlds characterized the worldviews of many indigenous African societies. Religious and ritual systems as well as social and political practices affirmed, reified, and sustained these complex relationships that were so important to the concept and performance of personhood.
“This exhibition is important not only because it brings together rare and exceptional examples of African art to examine the rather complex idea of life cycle, but it also marks the beginning of a new era in the study of African art at Princeton University,” said Okeke-Agulu.
Efut artist, late 19th–early 20th centuries Cross River region, Nigeria "Headdress"
Animal skin, wood, natural fibers, and vegetable pigments - h. 56.0 cm.
Gift of the Friends of the Princeton University Art Museum on the occasion of the 250th Anniversary of
Princeton University (1997-6) Photo: Bruce M. White
Objects on view include a vividly colored Nkanu initiation panel, the only sculpture of its kind outside European collections; a rare double-figured Asante akua’ba worn on the backs of women to ensure fertility and healthy children; a Bijogo ceremonial spoon in the form of a female figure; and a Kongo kneeling female figure with child, all of which are on loan from the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Also on view are two works by master Yorùbá sculptors: a magnificent maternity figure by Areogun of Osi (1885–1954), who worked in the Ekiti state of eastern Nigeria and was known for the rounded volumes of his figures; and the impressive Yorùbá triplet figures (ere ibeta) by Dadaolomo (died ca. 1920), carved with his distinct forward leaning posture.
The exhibition also highlights the use of materials other than wood by African artists. A Zulu wedding cape decorated with imported European glass beads shows the exquisite beadwork of the Xhosa- and Zulu-speaking peoples of South Africa. A hat worn by a member of the Bwami society is made from the skin of a scaly pangolin, while a Bembe reliquary figure is constructed from a cane armature and covered with patterned European trade cloth.
To illustrate the original context of the works on view, the exhibition includes a number of vintage photo postcards produced by African and European photographers in the first decades of the twentieth century. These photographs depict objects similar to the ones on view in their original contexts. The postcards, veritable works of art by themselves, provide visual accounts of objects whose cultural contexts are otherwise lost in their new lives as museum objects.
Life Objects: Rite Of Passage in African Art will be accompanied by an illustrated handout written by Chika Okeke-Agulu.
African Art at the Princeton University Art Museum
The Museum’s collection of African art, while relatively small in comparison to others in the Museum, reveals the continent’s immense diversity of artistic production. On display are works from west, central, and south Africa, including objects of prestige and daily use, royal regalia, symbols of secret societies, and sculptures that mark rites of passage such as birth, initiation, and death.
The original bequest for the collection, made in 1953 by Mrs. Donald B. Doyle in memory of her husband, comprised works collected prior to 1923 from what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Among the objects in this collection are a rare double caryatid headrest, an example of the art of the Chokwe peoples, and a distinctively shaped Kuba box. In recent years, gifts have been made principally by Perry E.H. Smith, whose Chokwe chair and Pende ivory pendants are on view, and H. Kelly Rollings, whose emblem of the Leopard Society is a remarkable object from the Cross River region. The Museum’s collection was greatly enhanced in 1998 by the bequest of John B. Elliott, Class of 1951, which includes a vast number of objects of daily use, adornment, and Akan gold pieces.
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