Kosmos - Rätsel der Menschheit

The great timekeepers of our earthly existence are the celestial bodies surrounding us, especially the moon and sun. Humans have been trying to explain them and decipher them for thousands of years. What is the universe, the ordering principle underlying the firmament? Kosmos - Rätsel der Menschheit (The Cosmos - Mystery of Mankind), now on view at the Museum Rietberg in Zürich, explores the great enigma that is the universe. Alongside cosmologies and creation myths from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Polynesia, those of the western world from Egypt and Mesopotamia to the Germanic peoples and the Biblical account in Genesis will also be presented, as well the history of European scientific inquiry. Based on the exhibition idea by Martin Brauen and his exhibition Visions of the Cosmos, which was shown at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York in 2009.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Images courtesy of the Museum Rietberg

Double Take: African Innovations

Celebrating Africa's continual dynamism and long tradition of artistic creativity, Double Take: African Innovations opens the doors to the Brooklyn Museum's storied African collection with a new, experimental installation that invites surprising and unexpected ways of looking at African art. It suggests universal themes that link seemingly dissimilar works, often across vast distances of time and space, while also presenting them within their own specific context of history and place.

Visit the exhibition's website for more information.

Elephant mask  -  Bamileke, Cameroon Grassfields  -  20th century

Information and image courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

Origins of the Afro Comb at the Fitzwilliam Museum

The 6,000-year history of the afro comb, its extraordinary impact on cultures worldwide, and community stories relating to hair today are being explored in this new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, England. Material culture on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum includes hundreds of remarkable combs - from pre-dynastic Egypt to modern-day combs referencing the Black Power Movement - as well as associated images and sculpture showing the wide variety of hair styles found in Africa and around the world. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Image courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum

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