Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art

Entering its final weeks at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art celebrates Native American ideas that have crossed time and space to be continuously refreshed with new concepts and expressions. Visitors are welcomed to experience this vitality through sculpture, paintings, ceramics, textiles, photographs, videos and monumental installations drawn from collections in the United States, Canada and Europe. Rarely seen historic pieces, shown alongside some of the finest contemporary works, demonstrate the diversity and continuity of Native American art and culture from 200 B.C.E. to the present.

Visit the official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum

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