They Wove for Horses: Diné Saddle Blankets

It is no secret that the Navajo (who call themselves the Diné) excelled at weaving. While most of their textiles were produced for trade, they had a strong tradition of producing saddle blankets for their own horses. These weavings span the duration of Navajo weaving from the first half of the nineteenth century to the present. The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture is currently presenting They Wove for Horses: Diné Saddle Blankets, an exhibition that examines innovation and continuity in this quiet but important indigenous tradition. It also looks at the variety of weaving techniques employed as well as the range of yarns from which these blankets were formed.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe

Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vases of the Ik’ Kingdom is now on view at the Princeton University Art Museum through February 17, 2013. Unlike some of the other broad installations of Maya art that are being staged this year, this exhibition focuses solely on the painted chocolate-drinking cups from one Maya site located in present-day Guatemala. Ik’ ceramics are characterized by their rich natural colors, veristic portraiture, skillful rendition of graceful movement, and elegantly fluid calligraphy. Dancing into Dreams uses this artistic microcosm to elucidate the courtly politics and dynastic history of the Ik’ Kingdom.              

View the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum

Streetparade der Götter – Bronzekunst aus Indiens Dörfern

Entering its final week at the Museum Rietberg in Zürich is Streetparade der Götter – Bronzekunst aus Indiens Dörfern (Street Parade of the Gods - Bronze Art from India's Villages), which showcases bronzes from the Bastar region in central India, an area still mainly inhabited by tribal societies. Visitors will discover unusual, powerful, and highly stylized works which tell of mighty gods, processions and possessed dancers. They will encounter a little-known, independent and complex culture which even today is full of life, despite the changes brought by modernity.
                                              

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Images courtesy of the Museum Rietberg

La Nuova Frontiera

Through December 9, the Palazzo Pitti of Florence presents The New Frontier. History and Culture of the Native Americans, a major exhibition highlighting works from the collections of the Gilcrease Museum of Oklahoma. Featuring tribal objects as well as American paintings and photographs, the show is being held as part of the 500th anniversary of the death of Amerigo Vespucci.

Visit the exhibiton's official website.

Images courtesy of the Gilcrease Museum and Palazzo Pitti

Spirit Faces at the Australian Museum

Through March 31, 2013, the Australian Museum of Sydney is presenting a special installation of masks from across Melanesia. Spirit Faces offers visitors the chance to discover the vast variety of South Pacific masks--in form, function, material, and associated mythology.

Visit the Australian Museum's official website.

Eharo mask  -  Papuan Gulf  -  Before 1920

Lorr mask  -  Duke of York Islands  -  Before 1885

Malanggan mask  -  New Ireland  -  Before 1887

Susu mask  -  New Britain  -  Before 1911

Overmodeled shell mask  -  Sepik, Papua New Guinea  -  Second half of 20th century

Images courtesy of the Australian Museum

A Song for the Horse Nation

Opening on October 29 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC is the major traveling exhibition A Song for the Horse Nation, which presents the epic story of the influence of horses on the indigenous cultures of North America. Through an array of 122 historic objects, artwork, photographs, songs and personal accounts, the exhibition traces the changes horses brought to travel, hunting, and war, and the ways in which Native American tribes celebrated generosity, exhibited bravery, and conducted ceremonies.

This exhibition first opened at the museum's George Gustav Heye Center in New York on November 14, 2009 and was on display until July 10, 2011. The Washington version doubles its exhibition space to 9,500 square feet and features fifteen new objects, including a hand-painted, nineteenth-century Sioux tipi depicting battle and horse raiding scenes.

View the exhibition's official website.

Horse mask  -  Blackfeet, Montana  -  ca. 1830s

Horse mask  -  Lakota, South or North Dakota  -  ca. 1860s

Painted hide robe  -  Blackfeet, Montana  -  Mid-1800s

Sash heddle  -  Ho-Chunk, Nebraska  -  ca. 1862

Shield with cover  -  Comanche, Oklahoma  -  ca. 1875

Quilled bag  -  Lakota, South or North Dakota  -  ca. 1870s

Information and images courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

Tribal Art Fair Amsterdam 2012

The 2012 edition of Amsterdam's Tribal Art Fair will be held on October 26–28 at its traditional location at De Duif. Nineteen respected dealers will be in attendance, offering tribal objects from Oceania, Africa, Indonesia, South America, Tibet and elsewhere. Comprising a world of jewelry and sculpture, textiles, masks, implements and furniture, the event will be vetted by experts in each region.

Find out more at the official TAF website.

Information and images courtesy of Tribal Art Fair Amsterdam

TABU?! Verborgene Kräfte - Geheimes Wissen

Through April 7, 2013, the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover is presenting TABU?! Verborgene Kräfte - Geheimes Wissenan (Taboo? Hidden Powers - Secret Knowledge), an exceptional assemblage of works from a wide range of traditional cultures which all have a function in dealing with social and cultural tensions and crisis situations. From a Siberian shaman's costume collected in 1788 to a Micronesian Mortlock Island mask, the objects on display evoke a variety of ritual contexts, the true understanding of which was the exclusive province of initiates.

View the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover

Histories in Africa: Twenty Years of Photography by Elizabeth Gilbert

Currently on view at The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida is Histories in Africa: 20 Years of Photography by Elizabeth Gilbert, an exhibition showcasing more than fifty black and white photographs documenting Gilbert’s twenty-year journey across the African continent. During this remarkable expedition, Gilbert's aim was to capture a land in flux, one in which traditional cultures and customs were rapidly disappearing. Her hope was to “distill the subjects in a timeless record, and preserve the memory of a lost era long after globalization has eroded it forever.”        

View the exhibition's official website.
      

Information and images courtesy of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens

Design en Afrique: s'asseoir, se coucher et rêver

              The Musée Dapper recently opened a new exhibition entitled Design en Afrique: s'asseoir, se coucher et rêver (Design in Africa: To sit, sleep and dream), which reveals a world dedicated to African objects, both contemporary and antique, that support the body. Chairs, stools, and headrests are the highlights of the installation.

View the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Musée Dapper

C'est de l'homme dont j'ai à parler. Rousseau et l'inégalité

Currently on view at the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève in Switzerland is a compelling exhibition entitled C'est de l'homme dont j'ai à parler. Rousseau et l'inégalité (It is of Men that I Have to Speak. Rousseau and Inequality), which focuses on the historical and cultural milieu of Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. From Geneva to the Americas via Switzerland, the East, and "Negroland"; through images, European and non-European art objects, texts, music, contemporary art and a handful of old books; the MEG invites its visitors to discover Rousseau the anthropologist and, around him, a period which, before ours, thought deeply about the history of mankind and the destiny of the people on earth. With Rousseau as guide, the questions, if not always the answers, are still pertinent today.                  

Visit the exhibition's official website.

 Jean-Jacques Rousseau  -  Design by Albrier, engraving by Huet  -  1825

Mask  -  Iroquois, Canada  -  Beginning of 19th century

Pectoral  -  South Africa, Namibia, or Botswana  -  Late 19th or early 20th century

Friendship baton, hunka-yapi  -  Lakota, North America  -  20th century

Tomahawk pipe  -  North America  -  19th century

Information and images courtesy of the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève

New Online Sale Exhibition at Jacaranda Tribal

Jacaranda Tribal is now presenting a new sale exhibition of exquisite tribal art from Africa, Oceania, and elsewhere. Our fifteen new offerings include a marvelous Bembe female figure collected by Edmond Dartevelle in the 1930s; a large, lustrous Gambier Islands fish hook carved of a single piece of pearl shell; an astonishingly detailed Javanese keris knife; a beautifully designed Ethiopian processional cross dating from the 13th–14th century; wirework prestige objects from Zimbabwe and South Africa; and more. A selection of highlights from the assemblage are below. For detailed information on these beautiful works and many more, please visit www.jacarandatribal.com

Female figure  -  Bembe, D. R. Congo  -  Early 20th century

Fish hook  -  Gambier Islands  -  Late 19th century

Keris  -  Java  -  Late 19th or early 20th century

Heddle pulley depicting an avian figure  -  Senufo, Côte d'Ivoire  -  Late 19th or early 20th century

Processional cross  -  Ethiopia  -  13th–14th century

Woman's hat  -  Zulu, South Africa  -  Early 20th century

Pair of stools (one featuring a cache box)  -  Nupe, Nigeria  -  Early 20th century

Prestige knife with wirework  -  Shona, Zimbabwe  -  Late 19th or early 20th century

www.jacarandatribal.com