Heroic Africans at the Met

This fall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art unveiled a stunning exhibition highlighting eight major sculptural traditions from West and Central Africa. Focusing on canonized portraiture of storied, nigh-mythical chieftans, kings, and other larger-than-life elite, Heroic Africans. Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures traces the histories of these cultures through the chronology of the individuals they enshrined, sculpted images of whom were often the only tangible historical record left to posterity. 

The masterpieces on display represent the Akan, Bangwa, Kom, Chokwe, Luluwa, Kuba, and Hemba cultures, as well as the civilizations of Ife and Benin. Equally impressive on aesthetic, conceptual, and curatorial levels, the installation offers audiences unprecedented experiences on every side. The in-depth examination of specific identities and personal histories to which visitors are treated here is already uncommon in African exhibitions, let alone one that encompasses such a wide variety of exceedingly beautiful and disparate works. 

Beginning from this rare and challenging theme, Heroic Africans leads viewers through a great hall of champions, from culture-founders to queen mothers, concluding with an amazing assemblage of twenty-two Hemba commemoration figures, such an overwhelming gathering of which has never been seen before.

Visit the official website here.

Images courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria" Begins at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Exhibition Reminder!!

The critically acclaimed exhibition Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria begins its four-venue U.S. tour at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on September 19, 2010. The exhibition was most recently at the British Museum, London, where the work was hailed as "humanely observed and crafted with genius" and as the kind of art "whose greatness pre-exists and survives us." (The Guardian)

The exhibition has been co-organized by the Museum for African Art, New York City, and the Fundación Marcelino Botín, Satander, Spain, in collaboration with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

Schedule:

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, September 19, 2010 - January 9, 2011

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, February 12 - May 22, 2011

Indianapolis Museum of Art, July 8 - October 9, 2011

Museum for African Art, New York City, November 11, 2011 - March 4, 2012

Exhibition:

Devoted to the art of Ife, the ancient city-state of the Yoruba people of West Africa (in present-day southwestern Nigeria), Dynasty and Divinity features more than 100 extraordinary brass, terra-cotta, and stone sculptures, ranging in date from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries. Many of the works have never before been on display outside Nigeria.

Through a great diversity of objects, the exhibition reveals the remarkably creative range of Ife art. Included are handsome idealized portrait heads, exquisite miniatures, expressive caricatures of old age, lively animals, and sculptures showing the impressive regalia worn by Ife's kings and queens. Together, these illuminate one of the world's greatest art centers and demonstrate not only the technological sophistication of Ife artists, but also their rich aesthetic language.

The African sculptures mistaken for remains of Atlantis

A hundred years ago when German explorer Leo Frobenius visited West Africa and came across some sculpted bronze heads and terracotta figures, he was sure he had discovered remains of the mythical lost city of Atlantis.

He refused to believe that the sophisticated and ornately carved bronze sculptures were made in Africa.

In his book, Voice of Africa, Frobenius wrote: "Before us stood a head of marvellous beauty, wonderfully cast in antique bronze, true to the life, incrusted with a patina of glorious dark green. This was, in very deed, the Olokun, Atlantic Africa's Poseidon."

"I was moved to silent melancholy at the thought that this assembly of degenerate and feeble-minded posterity should be the legitimate guardians of so much loveliness," he added.

Frobenius was referring to the people who lived in the Kingdom of Ife and whose artists, in fact, created the sculptures over the course of some four centuries. Leading art experts believe they are among the most aesthetically striking and technically sophisticated in the world.

The Ife kingdom was believed to have flourished from the 12th to the 15th centuries in the lush forests of the lower Niger in West Africa in what is today the south western region of Nigeria.
Frobenius' assertions helped reinforce long held assumptions of African art as primitive and inferior to European art.

However, 30 years later, Europeans were forced to revise these previously held assumptions when 18 brass and copper sculptures were discovered in the Ife kingdom. The works were later brought to London, where they were enthusiastically received.

A 1948 article in the Illustrated London News was headlined: "African art worthy to rank with the finest works of Italy and Greece" and "Donatellos of medieval Africa."

As critic Michael Glover notes in the UK's Independent newspaper, "At the same historical moment that Andrea del Verrocchio was doing his wonderfully painstaking, high-Renaissance drawing of a female head, anonymous artisans in Ife were working with brass, bronze, copper and terracotta to produce a series of exquisite heads that are not only the equal of Donatello in technical brilliance, but also just as naturalistic in their refinement. So much for African primitivism."

Now, a worldwide touring exhibition is bringing the show to modern audiences in the first-ever show dedicated to the Ife sculptures.

The exhibition features more than 100 bronze, terracotta and stone sculptures, ranging in date from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.

Many of these have never been on display outside Nigeria. Most of the works are on loan from the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

The sculptures are currently on display at the British Museum in London until 4th July and will move to various states in the United States from September.

According to Neil Macgregor, Director of the British Museum, there was a conscious effort to display the Ife sculptures at the same time as an exhibition of Italian Renaissance drawings at the museum because he wanted to highlight the "relationship between Nigerian culture and the rest of the world."

"We wanted to make the point that nobody, when they learn European art history, studying Italy and Renaissance in the fourteenth, fifteenth centuries, is taught that at exactly the same time in West Africa, artistic production of the same level and the same quality is going on," he said during a talk on Nigeria at the museum.

The sculptures depict human figures from a cross-section of Ife society and provide a fascinating insight into local customs and beliefs of the time.

However, not much is known about the origins of the Ife casts or who they were made for or for what purpose.

Macgregor said: "This is a history that is still very much in the making. And it's not, of course, just the history of Ife. The bronze casting world of West Africa is an astonishingly large and rich one.

"The quality of the objects continues to astound and particularly the objects that have never been seen before," Macgregor continued. "On any view they are a masterpiece, not just of observation but of sculpting and casting."

Source: CNN
BY: Stephanie Busari

Museum Announces U.S. Tour of "Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria" Exhibition

The Museum for African Art, New York, has announced the U.S. tour of the important exhibition Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria. Devoted to the art of Ife, the ancient city-state of the Yoruba people of West Africa (in present-day southwestern Nigeria), Dynasty and Divinity has been co-organized by the Fundación Marcelino Botín and the Museum, in collaboration with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments. The exhibition (with the title Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from West Africa) is on view through June 6, 2010, at the British Museum, London, where it has received widespread critical and public acclaim. Following its presentation there, it will travel to the U.S., opening at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on September 19, 2010, and concluding its tour in November 2011 at the Museum for African Art, where it will be among the inaugural exhibitions in the Museum’s new building, which opens in April of that year.

Dynasty and Divinity features more than 100 extraordinary bronze, terra-cotta, and stone sculptures, ranging in date from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, many of which have never been on display outside of Nigeria. All of the objects in the exhibition are on loan from the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

Museum for African Art President Elsie McCabe Thompson states, “The selection brought together in Dynasty and Divinity is profoundly moving, both in its beauty and by the intense human emotions that motivated Ife artists. In addition, this is the first exhibition outside of Ife itself to focus exclusively on these remarkable works, and thus the first to offer a vivid portrait of the culture of this ancient Yoruba city-state. The exhibition reminds us that the legacy of Ife art extends far beyond the boundaries of Nigeria, continuing to inspire people and cultures across the globe. The Museum for African Art is thrilled to be working in partnership with the Fundación Marcelino Botín on this major project, and is delighted to continue the exhibition’s tour in the United States.”

Over the course of some four centuries, artists at Ife created sculpture that ranks among the most aesthetically striking and technically sophisticated in the world. Today, the city of Ife is still a spiritual heartland for the 29 million Yoruba people living in Nigeria and countless descendants in the Americas and elsewhere in the world. The present Ooni, or traditional ruler, of Ife, His Royal Majesty Alayeluwa Oba Okunade Sijuwade, Olabuse II, heads one of the longest surviving monarchies in the world. Some of the objects in the exhibition, including a copper mask said to represent the fourteenth-century ruler Obalufon II, were kept in the Ooni’s palace until the 1950s, when they were transferred to the Nigerian Department of Antiquities for purposes of conservation, study, and display. Dynasty and Divinity reveals the extraordinarily creative range of Ife art through a diversity of objects that includes handsome idealized portrait heads, exquisite miniatures, expressive caricatures of old age, monsters, lively animals, and sculptures showing the impressive regalia worn by Ife’s kings and queens. Together, these illuminate one of the world’s greatest art centers and demonstrate not only the technological sophistication of Ife artists, but also the rich aesthetic language they developed in order to convey cultural concerns.

The sculptures in the exhibition demonstrate the dignity and self-assurance readily associated with the idea of dynasty and the violence and misfortune that could befall human beings. Several superbly crafted copper alloy and terra-cotta heads and figures, for example, are expressive representations of the notion of authority, while startling representations of disease and deformity, rendered in stone and terra-cotta, show the afflictions that may result from both divine and worldly forces.

Among the exhibition’s many masterpieces are a group of life-size copper portrait heads, carved stone animals, and the spectacular seated male figure found in the town of Tada, Nigeria, shown dressed in an elaborate textile. Like many of the objects in the exhibition, the figure, dating from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, was still part of a shrine in use in the early twentieth century. Two important bronzes from the Kingdom of Benin show the link between Ife and Benin, whose traditional ruler is thought to be descended from the royal Ife dynasty.

U.S. Tour Schedule
Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria opened at the Fundación Marcelino Botín, in Santander, Spain, in June 2009, and traveled to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid prior to its presentation at the British Museum. The exhibition’s U.S. tour is as follows:

• September 19, 2010 – January 9, 2011: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
• February 19 – May 22, 2011: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
• July 10 – October 9, 2011: Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
• November 11, 2011 – March 4, 2012: Museum for African Art, New York, NY

Source: artdaily.org

Sculpture Deemed Too Complex for Africa Could Be Real After All

Ever since a pure copper sculpture was found buried in a palm grove near the Nigerian city of Ife, experts from the West have argued that the artefact was a fake that was too sophisticated to have been created by African hands.

Found in 1910, the "Olokun head" left Western curators doubting that such a technically advanced work of art could have been created by indigenous people. Years later, they even began to doubt its authenticity, claiming that the original had been sold illegally and the one which remained in Nigeria was an ingenious copy. But now, new science is set to turn past wisdom on its head. There is a growing belief among contemporary curators that the "counterfeit" sculpture is the real thing, according to The Art Newspaper.

When it first travelled to the British Museum in 1948, it was exhibited as a copy; scholars claimed it was made from a blend of ancient materials that had been melted down, while the real work of art was thought to have been smuggled out of Africa by a European or American collector. The artwork, now on its second visit to the British Museum, where it is currently displayed again as a "replica" will undergo a thorough scientific investigation next month to establish the truth, once and for all.

Nigel Barley, a former British Museum curator who briefly examined the head in January, believes it may well be the original. Enid Schildkrout, from New York's Museum for African Art and curator of the current exhibition at the British Museum, agrees. If, she said, the real treasure had in fact been stolen, "it is surprising that the original has never reappeared".
It was first found by Leo Frobenius, a German anthropologist who had heard rumblings of a buried sculpture in a palm grove, just outside Ife, near a shrine dedicated to the goddess of the sea, Olokun. He organised a dig to investigate, and found the artwork.

Some days later, the colonial administration seized the sculpture on the grounds that it was sacred and should be returned to its original site, before it was transferred to the Ife Museum. One theory that emerged was that Frobenius commissioned a replica when he was instructed to hand over the artefact, and smuggled the original out of the country.

At the time of discovery, the head was considered too great a masterpiece to have been created by indigenous African artists a reflection of prevailing attitudes of the early 20th century. Some Europeans even theorised that the work was a remnant from the lost city of Atlantis. A spokeswoman for the British Museum said when the head travelled to the West, it caused a huge stir because "it flew in the face of Western perceptions" (of African heritage and cultural achievements).

It is now accepted by the curatorial community that the advanced artistic techniques used to create the sculpture were "more advanced than those of Renaissance Italy, and comparable to those of [the artist] Donatello".

Such sculptures, discovered in Nigeria and neighbouring Benin, were sold on the open market for under £100, in some instances, during the 1950s. This particular work was surrounded by various myths and beliefs, but it was not actually examined until 1948, when it left Nigeria and specialists at the British Museum declared it was a replica.

Since then, curators have cast doubt over the idea that Frobenius organised the deceit, not least because it is highly unlikely that such a complicated replica which was found to be made from authentically ancient materials could have been made in such a short space of time.

Source: www.archaeologydaily.com

Review of "Kindgom of Ife" from the Guardian

By Jonathan Jones:

This is an exceptional exhibition, even by the high standards the British Museum has established in recent years. It is extraordinary because it brings together such a large number of masterpieces that have rarely or never been exhibited outside Nigeria before – and when I say masterpieces, I mean artworks that rank with the Terracotta Army, the Parthenon or the mask of Tutankhamen as treasures of the human spirit.

For European artists a century ago, African sculpture was powerful precisely because it did not conform to the smooth idea of beauty that Picasso's generation had been brought up on – ideas that went back to classical Greece. But they had not seen the art of Ife, a medieval city-state that flourished from the 12th to 15th centuries in West Africa, trading across the Sahara with the Islamic Mediterranean world.

The superb sculpted heads in this exhibition – statues of sick people, monuments to warriors, royal heads whose strange vertical scars tell of the ceremonies of the court – were first rediscovered in quantity in an amazing find on a building site in the modern Nigerian city of Ife in 1938. This art was so different and unexpected, so "un-African", that one of its first students thought it must be the lost art of Atlantis.

But these works were not Greek, let alone from Atlantis. The faces that gaze coolly past you from these cases are challenging and formidable in their beauty. And they are disturbing to anyone who has any lingering belief in the uniqueness of European art. Sculptors in Ife imitated the human face as accurately and sensitively as any Greek, and matched the Greek feeling for harmony, balance and proportion.

What we see here is an African classical art – by which I mean an art with a strong concept of order that gives it a special authority, whether it comes from Athens, China or Ife. Like that of ancient Egypt, the art of Ife is perfect, remote, godlike and yet – as with Egypt – when you look again it is highly observational, rooted in the real life of this lost civilization.

Ife remains mysterious. The catalogue admits there's so much still to learn about this art and the world that created it. Hopefully this exhibition will be the starting point for new archaeology. It elicits awe. To behold these royal heads is to travel to a fabled realm far beyond your imagination, a place richer than Atlantis.

The Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures of West Africa at the British Museum

This major exhibition presents exquisite examples of brass, copper, stone and terracotta sculpture from West Africa.

The Kingdom of Ife (pronounced ee-feh) was a powerful, cosmopolitan and wealthy city-state in West Africa (in what is now modern south-west Nigeria).

Ife flourished as a political, spiritual, cultural and economic centre in the 12th–15th centuries AD, and was an influential hub of local and long-distance trade networks.

The exhibition features superb pieces of Ife sculpture, drawn almost entirely from the magnificent collections of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria.

The artists of Ife developed a refined and highly naturalistic sculptural tradition in stone, terracotta, brass and copper to create a style unlike anything in Africa at the time. The technical sophistication of the casting process is matched by the artworks’ enduring beauty.

The human figures portray a wide cross-section of Ife society and include images of youth and old age, health and disease, suffering and serenity.

The exhibition will run from March 4th through June 6th, 2010. For more information and to watch an video about the exhibit visit: http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/future_exhibitions/kingdom_of_ife.aspx.

Tomorrow, we will include a review of the exhibit that was featured in the UK's Guardian.