Twin Figure (Ibeji), 19th century Wood, indigo, glass beads, cowry shells, fiber, and metal Unknown Yoruba artist Nigeria Anonymous gift 1963.3.2 Photo by Kenneth Hayden

“The World is a Journey”
Art in African Life

 A new installation of African Art opens August 20 at the Speed.  Some twenty-five works of African art from the museum’s collection and on loan are newly on view in the Mr. and Mrs. Owsley Brown II Galleries on the museum’s main level. Prominently located between the Decorative Arts Gallery and the grand staircase, the new African installation will be seen by almost every visitor to the museum, and its close proximity to the museum’s collections of European and American art offers a more global presentation of the museum’s collections, as well as opportunities for provocative cultural and artistic comparisons.

The African art on view at the Speed focuses on traditional works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Previously installed by region and style, African art is now arranged by broad themes that play cross-culturally across the African continent: Beauty and the Body, Status and Display, Performance of Faith, Ancestors and the Dead, and Personal Powers. The themes highlight historical and cultural values found in these works of art.

The category Beauty and the Body, for instance, presents art that radiates a person’s status, well-being, beauty, and power. An elaborately appliquéd and embroidered raffia fabric by Kuba artists is a highlight of this section.

Status and Display presents art that communicates the prestige accorded royalty, political leaders, and elders in African communities. Objects that display authority, such as those belonging to kings or military chiefs, often incorporate symbols of potentially threatening powers, such as the richly carved Yoruba panels made for a war chief that are masterpieces of the Speed’s African collection.

The section devoted to Performance of Faith shows some of the ways that art and beauty combine in African religions. An example is the graceful shrine figure to the Yoruba god Shango that shows a woman in peaceful prayer.

For many Africans, ancestors hold a central place in community life. The section Ancestors and the Dead reflects the importance of the relationship between the living and their ancestors through art made to remember, protect, and communicate. For example, a Fang reliquary guardian figure, with his dynamic, muscular body and skull-like face, expresses his protective oversight of the dead.

The category Personal Powers presents a cast-bronze altar from Benin, adorned with the figures of four women. In southern Nigeria, among the Benin people, a person’s destiny is negotiated with God before birth, and such altars provide a means for a person to achieve his or her destiny.

New interpretative labeling conveys multiple layers of information, which illuminate the themes and discuss specific works of art. The label information is the result of the latest research and provides material on these works of art not previously available to the public. The interpretive information takes various forms from thematic wall texts to an extensive illustrated timeline placing African art and culture alongside other events in world art and history. In addition to stressing the aesthetic qualities of these African works of art, the installation provides background on the original environments and purposes for which these kinds of objects were created. The labels often incorporate field photographs to show how such objects were used, for example, as personal adornment, as altars for religious worship, or to be danced in masquerades.

African proverbs—and their universal wisdom—are interspersed throughout the exhibition. A Yoruba proverb, “The world is a journey, the afterworld is home,” gives this exhibit its title. This proverb illustrates the intensely spiritual aspect that underlies much African art and life.

This installation of the museum’s African art collection is the latest element in a broad-ranging plan to re-conceptualize the African collection through new acquisitions, exhibitions, and programs. In 2000 the museum created a plan to develop the African art collection. The Speed engaged eminent African art scholar Dr. Susan Vogel--formerly curator of African art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, founding director of the Museum for African Art in New York and formerly director of the Yale University Art Museum--to write and help implement a plan for building the collection. The plan outlined ways of increasing interpretive links with the rest of the museum’s collection and eventually developing a collection representing the art of the whole African continent, not just sub-Saharan Africa. The plan also sets an agenda for small but significant exhibitions that would feature new acquisitions, while adding to the scholarship on African art. The new installation is designed to be flexible in order to accommodate new acquisitions and new loans as the plan proceeds.

The newly installed African art will become increasingly important as an educational resource at the museum. The Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) requires students in Kentucky schools to be taught about African culture and civilizations. The museum is working in partnership with the Kentucky Department of Education and with the museum’s Teacher Advisor Board to advance the educational use of the African art collection at the Speed.

The museum wishes to thank Dr. Bess Reed, African art scholar, for her help in preparing interpretive materials for the installation, and Linda Chatmon, Walter Hutchins, Mitchell Payne, Delorez Walls, and Valarie Shultz-Wilson of the African Art Collection Reinstallation Task Force of the Speed Art Museum for their support and assistance.

top