Lascaux: The Sistine Chapel of Prehistory

On view now at the Musée du Cinquantenaire in Brussels is an astounding exhibition highlighting one of Europe's greatest historical treasures: the painted caves of Lascaux.  Lascaux: The Sistine Chapel of Prehistory is a full-scale, scientifically accurate reproduction of the famous cave complex and features the finest up-to-date visual technologies, giving the visitor the impression of actually being in the cave itself. The exhibition also pays attention to the cultural context within which this art originated, showing how its creators lived, hunted, ate and clothed themselves. Serving to frame the whole are complete animal skeletons and bone fragments, a realistic portrayal of a baby mammoth, and contemporary implements and jewellery, drawn from the Museum of Natural Sciences and the Cinquantenaire Museum.

Visit the official website

Image courtesy of the Musée du Cinquantenaire

The 31st annual Marin Show: Art of The Americas

Open to the public on February 21–22, The Marin Show: Art of the Americas will celebrate its thirty-first year as the world’s leading show specializing in the art and culture of indigenous peoples from North, Central, and South America. Featuring more than 100 dealers, this event showcases a unique combination of antique Native American, Pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial, and contemporary American Indian art that attracts top dealers, passionate collectors, artists, and the culture-curious from across the world. 

For more information, visit the event's official website.

San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show 2015

More than eighty of the world’s top tribal art specialists will once again showcase art, jewelry, antiques, and accessories from the most remote areas on the planet at the twenty-ninth annual San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show, held February 6– 8, 2015, at Fort Mason Center’s Festival Pavilion. Ranging from galleries that have been doing business for generations to dealers who launched their careers collecting in the field, the artwork offered here is always stimulating and represents some of the best to be found in North America. The gala opening reception on the evening of February 5 benefits the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and is a not-to-be-missed event that allows first access to the wide-ranging treasures that the show presents.

For more information about the event, visit the official website.

BRAFA 2015

BRAFA (Brussels Antiques & Fine Art Fair), Belgium’s foremost art, antiques, and antiquities show, will celebrate its sixtieth anniversary from January 24 until February 1 in its longstanding Tour and Taxis location. Eight dealers will represent tribal art at the event: Didier Claes, Pierre Dartevelle, Bernard Dulon, Yann Ferrandin, Jacques Germain, Sarah de Monbrison, Judith Schoffel and Christophe de Fabry, and Serge Schoffel. 

For more information on the event, visit the official website.

Charity Auction at Zemanek-Münster

Auctioneers Zemanek-Münster will hold an African art sale for charity on January 31 in Würzburg. The lots will highlight an assemblage of approximately 300 masks and figures from the estate of Drs. Vera & Wolfgang Nerlich of Munich.

View the online catalogue.

Image courtesy of Zemanek-Münster

New Exhibition at Jacaranda Tribal - Fante Asafo Flags

Jacaranda Tribal has just revealed a new online exhibition dedicated to asafo flags of the Fante peoples of Ghana. Made as part of a martial tradition dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, these flags represent the merger of two cultural traditions: the Akan tradition of combining proverbs with visual imagery and the European heraldic tradition, which used flags and banners displaying royal arms in regimental colors. The Fante are a sub-group of the Akan, and even though Akan societies had no standing army, the asafo (a people’s militia) was a well-established social and political organization based on martial principles. Every able-bodied person belonged to an asafo; every child automatically belonged to his or her father’s company. The asafo flags are essentially tribal flags, used in colonial times and still made today. Depicting a wide variety of human and animal figures engaged in any number of interactions, the iconography of the flags reflects rivalries between asafo companies and illustrates proverbs, which were of rich importance throughout Akan culture. For more details on these works, please visit www.jacarandatribal.com

Images © James Worrell 2014

www.jacarandatribal.com

Joyce Mansour, poétesse et collectionneuse

Through February 1, 2015, the Musée du Quai Branly’s Atelier Aublet is hosting an installation devoted to Joyce Mansour (1928–1986). A poetess without boundaries and of Egyptian origin, she was close to the surrealist scene and erupted on the Parisian avantgarde in 1953. The exhibition, conceived of by Philippe Dagen, consists of photographs by Mansour as well as the artworks she surrounded herself with. These include artifacts with symbolic value that she created herself in the manner of André Breton, with whom she had close ties, as well as tribal artworks, especially from the South Seas, of the kind that were so cherished by the surrealists.

View the exhibition's official website.

Images courtesy of the Musée du Quai Branly

Tribal Art Sale at Lempertz

On January 27, Lempertz in Brussels will offer an unusually large number of lots in its winter sale, the particular strength of which will be Yoruba material from Nigeria. The most interesting group of pieces from the area comes from the collection of Jacques Vogelzang, one of the founders of the Vereniging Vrienden Etnografica (Friends of Tribal Art Association) in the Netherlands.

View the online catalogue.

Power figure, nkishi  -  Songye, D.R. Congo

Images courtesy of Lempertz