"African Artistry in Iron and Clay" at The Birmingham Museum of Art

A new exhibition at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama features approximately fifty-five works of African ceramics and iron art, including vessels, musical instruments, currency objects, sculpted figures, staffs, tools and ritual objects. The objects come primarily from the countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 


Iron and clay are extremely important materials and media in West African culture. They are valued not only for their practical use in the fabrication of essential tools, weapons, currency, and vessels, but also for their spiritual potency. Objects made of iron and clay play important roles in rites of passage, healing rituals, divinations, governance, religious practice, and conflict mediation. Many myths and legends recount the importance of the blacksmith and the potter in African society. 


Throughout Africa, blacksmiths are generally born into their occupational specialty, and may only marry women from other blacksmith families. While the men smelt and forge iron, the women in their families specialize in ceramics, creating vessels for daily use and ritual objects. It is fire that transforms raw clay and iron ore into the secular and sacred objects that are essential to the well-being of African communities. This specialized occupational knowledge is jealously guarded by these men and women, who acknowledge that it was originally imparted by a divine source, usually as part of a sacred covenant. 


The ceramics in this exhibition are only loan to the Museum from The Dick Jemison Collection. Jemison, an artist who divides his time between Birmingham and the American Southwest, is interested in tribal arts around the world. The iron objects in the exhibition were given to the Museum in 2004 by Mort and Sue Fuller, of New York. 


The exhibition is on view through March 2011. 


Source: The Birmingham Museum of Art

African Instruments at Musical Instruments Museum

MIM’s Africa and Middle East collection features musical instruments from forty-seven sub- Saharan and twenty-one North African and Middle Eastern nations. Guests can discover and explore the royal court music of Rwanda and Burundi, the drums of Benin’s Vodun spiritual tradition, a brass trumpet that is part of the Porto-Novo palace tradition, and instruments from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The gallery also features many variations of the lute-like oud and diverse traditions employing harps, koras, zithers, flutes, and trumpets from the entire region.

Country: Ghana
Ethnic group: Ashanti
Instrument: Ntan Barrel Drum

Significance: Osei Bonsu (1900-1977) was a famous drum carver in Ghana. Ntan bands were most popular between the 1920s and 1950s, playing at celebrations such as naming ceremonies, weddings and funerals. The Ashanti are matriarchal, and hence the "mother" drum leads the ensemble.
To acknowledge this matriarchy, ntan drums have carved breasts, while many include the heart (symbolizing patience – a mother’s heart), the crescent moon and star (evoking the proverb "although the moon is brightest, the star is more constant"), an elephant (symbolizing power), and a coat of arms (acknowledging British colonial power). All of the relief carvings on this drum are related to Ashanti proverbs or folktales.
Collection: Purchased from a New York dealer.

Elong (gourd resonated xylophone), mid-20th century Burkina Faso Wood, gourd, skin and paper 421⁄2 x 19 x 271⁄2 inches

Barbier-Mueller: From art, to souls, Swiss collector switches sights

After decades spent amassing the world's top private collection of tribal arts, Swiss collector Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller is switching his sights -- crusading to save the heritage of little-known peoples across the globe.

"I'm shedding my identity as a collector of beautiful objects to become a gourmet of beautiful legends and beautiful souls," said the dapper Dior-clad 80-year-old in his more-than-swish Paris apartment with view over the Trocadero gardens and Eiffel tower.

Very wealthy Barbier-Mueller, who eats and sleeps amid Picassos and Cezannes as well as priceless African and Oceanic pieces, and has two museums in his name in Barcelona and Geneva, this week launches an ethnographic foundation that will chart for posterity the ways of life of endangered peoples worldwide.

"This is an anti bling-bling foundation, it's not Indiana Jones," he told AFP. "We're not out to seek emerald statuettes hidden in caves in the Andes.

"We're going to collect the memory, the myths, the ancestral stories of very tiny groups of 10, 12 villages who are being absorbed by bigger more brilliant ethnic groups, the groups who produce the masks and statues I collected for 33 years."

Born into a middle-of-the-spoon Swiss family, Barbier-Mueller was an early collector, gathering fossils as a child and later amassing old books, in particular 16th-century French and Italian poets.

Then at 22 when still simply named Barbier, he met and wooed Monique Mueller, daughter of renowned collector Josef Mueller, who along with early 19th-century Picassos, Legers and Braques also picked up antique African pieces.

"Their house was unbelievable, covered in oils from leading artists, but what really caught my eye were the African objects," said Mueller, who after successful careers in finance and real estate built up the 2,000-piece collection inherited from his father-in-law to a 7,000-piece treasure-trove encompassing Oceanic art as well as other "primitive" schools.

"I call it traditional art," he said, referring to discord over the use of terms such as "primitive" or "tribal" to refer to such works.


An extremely chatty charmer whose Andy Warhol portraits of him hang in the meticulously tidy flat -- his wife has her own because she is "too bohemian" -- Barbier-Mueller said of his collection of museum pieces: "We focused too much on objects."

"Because of my aesthetic sense I only looked at beautiful girls", he added laughingly, referring to works from well-known ancient civilisations, many of which he has donated or sold to leading museums such as Paris' Louvre and Quai Branly.

"But there are others that may be less beautiful but much more intelligent, or who are in the shadows and who must be sought out so we know what they have to tell us before they die."

According to the polyglot who speaks four languages and reads another four, including Latin and ancient Greek, there are at least 14 endangered peoples in Africa, four in India, three or four in Russia, two or three in Asia, and others in China, Central America and the Amazon.

Backed by the head of Swiss watch firm Vacheron Constantin, Juan-Carlos Torres, his new ethnology project will fund two ethnological studies a year on such communities in peril, with the studies followed up by books and conferences on each.

A first such work will look at the little-known Gan people of Burkina Faso and their funeral rites, the second to the animist Wan people of Cote d'Ivoire. The third study will touch on the Shamanic nomads of Siberia, the Nenets.

The scientific committee of the Fondation Culturelle Musee Barbier-Mueller includes Harvard's Suzanne Preston Blier, the British Museum's Jonathan King and Steven Hooper of East Anglia Univeristy, Robyn Maxwell of Australia's National Gallery and Anne-Marie Bouttiaux of Belgium's specialist African museum.

"We aim to cover the entire globe," Mueller said. "Who knows, we might discover a myth about the origin of the world as beautiful as the Iliad."

"I even hope to research a Swiss valley where they dance in masks at the New Year to chase away the devil," he added.

Source: AFP
By: Claire Rosemberg

Zemanek-Münster Tribal Arts Auction Preview: Lot 82

Pair of figures "bateba phuwe." Lobi, Burkina Faso.

Wood, greyish-brown encrusted (sacrificial) patina, a male and a female figure, regular, schematized features, "phisa" coiffure, slightly dam, minor missing parts (foot tips), cracks, the upper layer of the encrusted surface removed in some areas (insect caused damage), on blocklike base; regarding the modelling of arms and legs or special details like the grooved spine, both figures seem to be uniform. But considered as a whole the female figure is much more perfected, shoulders, breast- and back-area are modelled more powerful and harmonious, so that the bigger female can be regarded as the work of a master, while the male might be a work of a scholar or workshop. The analog patina in any case points to a common place of original location. According to the Lobi, god once sent the "thila" to the people, who should take care of their well-being and should sustain the organization of society. The "thila" used to contact men, more rarely women, and order the building of a shrine and the carving of the "bateba" figures. The sooth sayer "buor" acts as mediator between the "thila" and the people. He is consulted because of various reasons, for example in case of any disaster or sickness. The "bateba" figures come alive and active when they are positioned on a shrine. They combine human appearance and certain superhuman qualities of the "thila", they are their assistants to a certain extent. Accordingly "bateba" are able to recognize witches and fight them, as well as prevent harm, imposed by the witches. They were called "bateba duntundara". At which four types are distinguished: the "bateba phuwe" (the so-called "ordinary bateba"), the "bateba bambar" ("paralyzed bateba"), the "bateba ti puo" ("dangereous persons") and the "bateba ti bala" (the extraordinary persons"). Present figures belong to the ordinary "bateba phuwe", because they show no special gesture or any odd physiological attribute. There is no difference in strength between male and female "bateba", and even the size seems to have no influence on their fighting power. At which "bateba", as big in size as the present ones, are only rare to be found nowadays.

Height: 82 cm (male), 84 cm (female)

Estimate: 18000 - 40000 €