(Re)Discovering the “New World”: Maps & Sea Charts from the Age of Exploration

Featuring more than thirty European-made maps and sea charts inspired by New World exploration and published between 1511 and 1757, an exhibition now on view at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT presents a fascinating study in geographic and human progress, as well as a rare feast for the eyes. The works are drawn from the collection of Jack A. Somer, who observes that “these ancient maps represent Renaissance-period attempts by European ateliers to edify their clientele by revealing our ‘new’ hemisphere and its approaches, as discoveries and claims came ashore from those daring enough to pack their sea bags and head for the unknown.” Works of art as well as documents of unknown worlds, these maps were produced through woodcut or metal-plate engraving, and most are individualized with hand-applied color.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Gerard Mercator  -  America sive India Nova, 1595

Abraham Ortelius  -  Azores, 1584

John Speed  -  America, 1626

Images courtesy of the Bruce Museum

Opening of the Musée des Confluences, Lyon

The Musée des Confluences in Lyon opened on December 20, 2014. The architecture of the building is radical—hovering somewhere between crystalline and cloudlike—and it will be home to holdings of more than two million objects representing fields as varied as paleontology, mineralogy, zoology, entomology, anthropology, Egyptology, and prehistory. The core of its current collection is that of the former Musée d’Histoire Naturelle augmented with donations of famous collector Émile Guimet, as well as with objects collected by missionaries and from the holdings of the Musée Colonial. It was further enriched over the years by the new institution’s active acquisitions policy. The permanent collection will present more than 3,000 works shown in four thematic sections: Origins: The Stories of the World; Species: The Fabric of Life; Societies: The Theater of Mankind; and Eternities: Visions of the Great Beyond. Two inaugural exhibitions will feature most of the Émile Guimet pieces in Les Trésors de Guimet (The Guimet Treasures) and objects derived from curiosity cabinets in Dans la Chambre des Merveilles (In the Chamber of Marvels), both on view from the museum’s opening until July 2015. An abundance of cultural events—lectures, concerts, and a variety of academic programs— are also planned.

Visit the museum's official website.

Escultures Musicals

Through April 21, 2014, the Museu de la Música in Barcelona presents a sampling of 130 pieces from the Fundación La Fontana’s magnificent collection of musical instruments, which encompasses 2,000 objects from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania. Created by Helena Folch-Rusiñol and her husband Alejandro Maluquer, its volume, diversity and artistic value make this collection a prime international example of musical heritage conservation in Spain. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Museu de la Música

African and Oceanic Art Sale at Native

Native Auctions of Brussels presents a sale of fine African and Oceanic art and artifacts today, June 8. Among the lots are an array of ritual artifacts, statuary, and ornaments from New Zealand, Burkina Faso, Vanuatu, Mali, Papua New Guinea, and many other locales.  

View the online catalogue.

Hei tiki  -  Maori, New Zealand

Altarpiece with figures  -  Dogon, Mali

Figure  -  Lobi, Burkina Faso

Slit drum  -  Ambrym, Vanuatu

Mask  -  Dan, Côte d'Ivoire

Images courtesy of Native Brussels

BRUNEAF 2013

The 23rd Brussels Non-European Art Fair will open on June 5 and run through June 9. As always, the illustrious event will feature the participation of well-known tribal art galleries from France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the USA, making the salon a thoroughly international experience.

For more details on the event and this year's participating dealers, visit the official BRUNEAF website.

The Amsterdam Trail

On May 19–20, Amsterdam's Spiegelkwartier will host The Amsterdam Trail 2013. Galleries with Asian and international tribal art will be open throughout the weekend to display their recent acquisitions. Contemporary artists will also be displayed alongside ethnographic works. 

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

Métissages: Les collections Denise et Michel Meynet

A new exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-arts de Lyon dedicates itself to works from the collections of Denise and Michel Meynet, moving its focus seamlessly from African art to Japanese furniture to twentieth-century prints. These works complement and mirror one another in a constantly changing display setting. 

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

Beaded dolls  -  Nigeria  -  Twentieth century

Bracelets for a vodou priestess  -  Benin, Nigeria  -  Early twentieth century

Ikebana basket  -  Japan  -  Twentieth century

Information and images courtesy of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

PAD 2013 - Paris

The seventeenth Pavillon des Arts et du Design will take place from March 27-31 in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. The event aims to present the best of international achievement in the fields of design, decorative arts, and modern art. It will also offer aficionados of tribal art an exhibition in which four galleries in their field are taking part: Galerie Afrique, Grégory Chesne, Galerie Flak and Galerie Mermoz. 

For more information, please visit the official PAD website.

Treasures of the World's Cultures

Entering its final weeks at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Boon is an exhibition that brings together more than 250 unique objects from the world-famous collections of the British Museum. Treasures of the World's Cultures - The Great Collections: The British Museum presents masterpieces from every part of the world and from every epoch, opening a window onto two million years of human culture and history and on the extraordinary wealth of the collections of the British Museum, built over the last 250 years.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Mask with nose ornament  -  Calima, Colombia  -  600–1500 CE

Seated figure of a Buddha  -  Burma (Myanmar)  -  18th century

Wedjat-eye amulet  -  Egypt  -   ca. 664–525 BCE

Information and images courtesy of the Kunst- und Austellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Native American and Pre-Columbian Art Auction

On March 25, auctioneers EVE will present two sales of ancient American art at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. The first, smaller group of lots will highlight the Hopi art collection of Yves Berger, including a compelling range of katsina. The second sale will focus on sculptural and ceramic pre-Columbian art from Mexico to South America.

Visit the official EVE website.

Information and images courtesy of EVE

Sahara at the Museo delle Culture

In its final weeks at the Museo delle Culture in Lugano, Switzerland is an entrancing exhibition dedicated to the Swiss photographer Peter W. Häberlin (1912 - 1953) and is the seventh project of the “Esovisioni” exhibition cycle. This cycle is a long-term project of the Museo delle Culture with the objective to define a sort of “map” describing how the West has viewed (and judged) the Other. 

During their research, the museum staff unearthed the traces of Häberlin’s life through the diaries and accounts of his friends, travelling companions and remaining relatives. After two years of intense collaboration with the Swiss Foundation of Photography in Winterthur, the exhibition presents a rich selection of first prints, which were developed from the negatives conserved at the aforementioned Foundation.

Häberlin made his trans-Saharan reportage between 1949 and 1952: a vast series of photographs from four journeys, through which he followed the ancient caravan routes from Algiers, crossing the Saharan desert until he reached the North of Cameroon. Shortly after returning from his last trip, Häberlin died in a tragic accident in 1953, in the midst of his preparations for a new voyage to Mexico. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Museo delle Culture, Lugano

Kastom: Art of Vanuatu

Vanuatu is very different from other Pacific nations. Traditional practices known as Kastom remain strong even after a century of dual colonial religious influences. Kastom: Art of Vanuatu presents for the first time the unique collection of arts from this area held by the National Gallery of Australia. In the early 1970s the Gallery contracted an agent to field collect in Vanuatu resulting in the acquisition of nearly two hundred works, a selection of which will be accompanied by other important works from the NGA's Vanuatu collection. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia

Anatomies de l'étrange

On view at the Musée d'histoire naturelle Lille is Anatomies de l'étrange, an exhibition that seeks to question the notion of fantasy through its multifaceted collections. Visitors will encounter legendary monsters and extraordinary objects reflecting distant societies, often misunderstood and fantasized.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Ainu - Antenati spriti e orsi

As part of the celebrations for the centenary of Fosco Maraini’s birth, the Museo delle Culture in Lugano and the Museo Nazionale della Montagna in Turin have organized a temporary exhibition about the Ainu people. The exhibition displays sixty-two photographs taken by Fosco Maraini among the Ainu on Hokkaido island between 1938 and 1940, as well as in 1954, 1963 and 1971. There is also a series of objects belonging to the Ainu material culture.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Muzeo Nazionale della Montagna

Man muss eben Alles sammeln

Currently on view at the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zürich is an exhibition dedicated to the botanical and ethnographic collection of scholar Hans Schinz.  During a botanical expedition to southwest Africa in the years 1884–1887, Schinz collected over 200 ethnographic items that would help to form of basis of the ethnographic collections at the University of Zürich.  A selection of these objects is showcased in Man muss eben Alles sammeln, which also includes photography and botanical specimens collected by Schinz on his expedition.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich