Tribal Art Sale at Eve

Auctioneers Eve will present a sale of fine tribal art and artifacts on June 1 in Paris at the Drouot Richelieu. Featuring works from North America, Africa, and Oceania, the sale will highlight an array of exquisite Southwest objects, most importantly a number of archaic statues from the Mimbres and Anasazi.

For more information, view the online catalogue.

Figure of a bison  -  Mimbres or Anasazi  -  12th to 14th century

Kachina, Shalako Taka  -  Hopi or Zuni, Arizona  -  1880 or earlier  

Figure of Mother Earth  -  Mimbres or Anasazi  -  Ca 1000 CE

Images courtesy of Eve

Tribal Art Sale at Leonard Joel

Auctioneers Leonard Joel will present a large sale of Asian and tribal art on May 31 in Melbourne. Showcasing the collection of Mark Lissauer, the auction will put on offer an extensive range of works from all corners of Asia as well as Indonesia, New Guinea, Polynesia and elsewhere.

View the online catalogue.

Poi bowl  -  Hawaiian Islands

Three-bladed katar  -  India

Yam mask  -  Papua New Guinea

Images courtesy of Leonard Joel

Tribal Art Sale at Dorotheum

Dorotheum will present a sale of tribal art and artifacts on May 26. The works on offer will represent a wide variety of cultures across the African continent, as well as a small assemblage of items from the South Pacific and the Americas.

For more information, view the online catalogue.

Mask  -  Vuvi, Gabon

Power figure  -  Songye, D.R. Congo

Ancestor skull  -  Asmat, Papua New Guinea

Images courtesy of Dorotheum

Native American Art Sale at Bonhams

Bonhams will present a sale of fine Native American art in San Francisco on June 1.  Showcasing an extensive range of works from traditional cultures across the North American continent, the lots on offer will include beaded garments from the Plains, Southwestern ceramics and katsina, Northwest Coast masks, Arctic artifacts, and much more. 

View the online catalogue.

Boy's shirt  -  Lakota Sioux

Mask  -  Tsimshian

Effigy figure  -  Okvik (Eskimo)

Images courtesy of Bonhams

Dans le chambre des merveilles

One of the inaugural exhibitions at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, Dans le chambre des merveilles takes visitors into the world of the ‘cabinet of curisoities’, exploring exactly what it means to be a collector. In this context, the cabinet of curiosities becomes a kind of manifesto of the Museum's defining characteristics, as a place where the boundaries between different fields of knowledge disappear, a place where one comes to learn but also to question and marvel. In this ‘chamber of marvels’, 21st-century visitors can steep themselves in the atmosphere and spirit of a time when men roamed the world to collect and share their thirst for knowledge with their contemporaries. This exhibition thus presents not a recreation of an 18th-century cabinet of curiosities but a contemporary reinterpretation, an invitation to dream as one discovers a selection of the museum’s treasures.

Visit the official website.

Kuba Textiles: Geometry in Form, Space, and Time

Kuba Textiles: Geometry in Form, Space, and Time, at the Neuberger Museum of Art from March 1–June 28, 2015, is the first exhibition to bring together works from two of the earliest collections of Kuba textiles: the Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium, founded by Leopold II in 1897; and the Sheppard Collection at Hampton University in Virginia, gathered between 1890 and 1910 by the American Presbyterian Congo missionary William Henry Sheppard, who in 1892 was the first Westerner to be received by a Kuba king. Additional important loans to the exhibition come from the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and three private collections. In total, the exhibition features eighty-two Kuba artworks (forty-one textiles and forty-one objects), most being publicly exhibited for the first time.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Woman's overskirt  -  Kuba, D.R. Congo  -  Late 19th to early 20th century

Image courtesy of the Neuberger Museum of Art

Wurtzburger African Art Gallery at the Baltimore Museum of Art

The core of the African art collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art is a gift of 125 objects from the collection of Janet and Alan Wurtzburger that came to the museum in 1954. Now featuring more than 2,100 objects that span from ancient Egypt to contemporary Zimbabwe, the collection includes works from more than 200 African cultures in a full range of media. The gallery for the BMA’s African art collection has been expanded to more than three times its former size and has been relocated to the center of the museum’s first floor. This new Alan and Janet Wurtzburger African Art Gallery opened to the public on April 26, 2015. More than 100 objects, many large scale, address the impact of region, history, and culture on African art traditions. Several of these objects, such as the majestic Baga d’mba yoke from Guinea, are considered to be among the best of their kind.

Visit the Baltimore Museum of Art's website.

Shoulder headdress, d'mba  -  Baga, Guinea  -  Late 19th to early 20th century

Image courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art

Tribal Art Sale at Mossgreen

Mossgreen of Melbourne will present a sale of fine Australian, Oceanic, and Indonesian tribal art on May 20. The works on offer represent the collecting efforts of Marc & Elena Pinto, amassed during the couple's years of world travel. Featuring over 140 lots, the auction will highlight tribal weaponry, including ceremonial shields, clubs, spears and boomerangs.

View the online catalogue.

Images courtesy of Mossgreen