Tribal Art: A Paris Exhibition That Wears Many Hats

Items from the “Voyage in My Head” exhibition at Maison Rouge in Paris. From left: a warrior’s headdress from Papua-New Guinea, and a bird headdress from Cameroon.

For true hat lovers, the hottest place in June, most years, is Ladies’ Day at Ascot, London’s high society horse racing venue, when the spectators’ area is awash in hats of every color, shape and description. This year, however, Ascot comes second to the Maison Rouge Museum in Paris.

Through Sept. 26, the museum, a stone’s throw from the Bastille Opera House, is showing “Voyage Dans Ma Tête” (“Voyage in My Head”), an extraordinary exhibition of ethnic and tribal head-wear collected by the museum’s founder and president, Antoine de Galbert.

Over the past 15 years Mr. de Galbert has scoured the world, searching out unique and rare examples of the tribal hatter’s skills. The result is more than 400 decorative pieces, assembled from feathers, bones, beads, pearls, crocodile scales, monkey skulls and human hair, all collected from the four corners of the globe.

“My first purchase was a Papuan headdress of Cassowary feathers,” Mr. de Galbert said recently. “It was too small to be worn by a human, it belonged to a statue.” That piece is in the show, alongside tribal tiaras, crowns, hoods and helmets from Amazonia to India by way of Africa, Asia and the Pacific islands: headgear for every ritual, from religion to seduction to war.

Mr. de Galbert created the Maison Rouge in 2004, transforming a 27,000-square-foot former industrial space into a hyper-modern, minimalist set of exhibition rooms surrounding an art library and cafe. The style is cutting-edge contemporary, with a penchant for shows, like this one, that escape from the glass vitrine into the domain of installation art.

La Maison Rouge, 10 Boulevard de la Bastille; (33-1) 40-01-08-81; lamaisonrouge.org. Admission is 7 euros, or $8.64, at $1.23 to the euro.

Source: The NY Times
By: Claudia Barbieri

Marc & Denyse Ginzberg Collection Offered at Jacaranda Tribal

Two years ago, in September 2007, the Marc & Denyse Ginzberg Collection of African Forms went on sale at the Sotheby’s auction house in Paris. The auction was unlike anything that had ever been offered before at Sotheby’s – there was no figurative sculpture, no masks, and indeed little that would mark a traditionally inclined African art collection. Instead the collection celebrated the utilitarian and the nonfigurative; it celebrated the mastery and creativity that the African artist can bring to the everyday object. The objects in the collection have pushed the boundary between form and function, being at once fine works of art and useful household objects. After forming a full and comprehensive collection, writing a popular book called African Forms, and widely exhibiting the collection in museums and galleries, the Ginzberg’s were reluctantly ready to part with it. It’s no surprise that an extraordinary collection by renowned collectors should fetch €1,032,000, with many works fetching world record prices.

Marc & Denyse Ginzberg pictured

The Ginzberg collection brought much deserved attention to an under-recognized field of African Art and has brought recognition to some very fine, nonfigurative works. Jacaranda Tribal has been fortunate enough to debut a select exhibition of the Ginzberg Collection. The exhibition includes a range of objects – all of very fine museum quality – from snuff containers to jewelry, hats to weapons. We are delighted to be able to offer such a fine collection of works to the public. Be sure to check back at our blog often, as we will be posting several blogs on individual works in the coming weeks.

These highly decorated knives from Zimbabwe and the Congo are part of the collection offered by Jacaranda Tribal