Dance of the Ancestors: Art from the Sepik of Papua New Guinea

In its last days at the Museum Rietberg in Zürich is Dance of the Ancestors: Art from the Sepik of Papua New Guinea, an exhibition focusing on the many tribes of the Sepik River in northern Papua New Guinea. Philippe Peltier of the Musée du Quai Branly and Markus Schindlbeck of the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum, the exhibition’s curators, have assembled 220 objects, all from European museums and for the most part collected prior to World War I, with the intention of making the show more than just an art exhibition, but a tribute to the wealth and diversity of these cultures, as well as a key for understanding their lifestyles and their complex social organization.

Visit the Museum Rietberg website.

The Lady of the River

The Musée du Quai Branly has elected to inaugurate its new Martine Aublet Studio with a small but exquisite installation of sculpture from Papua New Guinea. The Lady of the River showcases an impressive, large-scale suspension hook depicting a female figure, recently acquired by the museum, along with twenty-seven other works from the museum's collections that evoke the status and role of women in the societies of the Middle Sepik region, as well as their relationship with men and with their ancestors.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Musée du Quai Branly

African and Oceanic Art at Christie's - June 11, 2012

Christie's will present a sale of fine African and Oceanic art and artifacts on June 11 in Paris. A number of prestigious private collections are offered in this sale. One of these is fresh to the market, a discovery that includes a group of rare works of art from Gabon, including a Fang reliquary figure purchased over fifty years ago. Three important sculptures from the collection of Russel B Aitken (notably the famous Yoruba equestrian figure exhibited in MOMA's 1935 exhibition African Negro Art), a selection of pieces from the Swiss collector Edith Hafter, and a Kongo power figure are among the other highlights. Another extraordinary discovery is a selection of unknown objects from the Marquesas Islands amassed by  Dr. Alphonse Long between 1882 and 1891.

View the online catalogue.

Reliquary figure  -  Mvai Fang, Gabon

Reliquary figure  -  Kota-Shamaye, Gabon

Mask  -  Dogon, Mali

Equestrian figure  -  Yoruba, Nigeria

Figural suspension hook  -  Sepik River, Papua New Guinea

Male figure  -  Abelam, Papua New Guinea

Mask  -  Fang, Gabon

Female figure  -  Mende, Sierra Leone

Information and images courtesy of Christie's