The Colonial Album at the Pitt Rivers Museum

This exhibition shows how very ‘ordinary’ albums from the colonial period can provide a unique insight into the colonial experience. Colonial albums are common, owned by many families who were involved in colonial activities, such as administration, missions, engineering, medical work or teaching. They are now recognized as important historical documents, and yet they are rarely seen.

The albums exhibited were produced by Percy Coriat, Ernest Emley and William Freer Hill between 1905 and 1935, and relate to periods spent in Sudan, Kenya, and Nigeria respectively. All three use photography as a tool to communicate and record the relationships between different cultures within a colonial context.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Pagan hunter (print enlargement) -  William Freer Hill  -  Nigeria, 1905–1915

Album  -  William Freer Hill  -  Nigeria, 1905–1915

Album  -  E. D. Emley  -  Kenya, 1914–1948

Album  -  Percy Coriat  -  Sudan, 1928–1931

Text and images courtesy of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

New Acquisitions at Jacaranda Tribal

Our gorgeous assemblage of new acquisitions for February 2012 includes a fine Akan terracotta head; a delicately carved Grebo mask; a pair of beautiful Yoruba ibeji twin figures; a powerful Senufo figurine, and many more.  Visit our online gallery at Jacaranda Tribal for more information on all of the objects below.

Terracotta head - Akan, Ghana 

Maskette - Grebo, Côte d'Ivoire - Early 20th century

Ibeji twin figures - Yoruba, Nigeria - Early 20th century

Female figurine - Senufo, Côte d'Ivoire or Mali - Early 20th century

Stool or headrest - Bongo, Sudan - Early 20th century

Stool - Sudan - Early 20th century

Ivory bracelet - Culture unknown (African)

Masai arm ornament - Kenya or Tanzania - Early 20th century

Headrest - Bari, Sudan - Late 19th or early 20th century

Snuff container - Sotho, Lesotho - Late 19th or early 20th century

Snuff container - Sotho, Lesotho - Late 19th or early 20th century

Pipe with figural bowl - Xhosa, South Africa - 19th or early 20th century

Ladle with figural handle - Zulu, South Africa - Late 19th or early 20th century

Headrest - Tsonga, South Africa - Late 19th or early 20th century

Gallery Dedicated to African Art Is Added to University of Memphis Art Museum

An inaugural exhibition, Art in the Land of Sundiata, is now on display at the redesigned gallery Africa: Visual Arts of a Continent at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis. The exhibition’s development, design, and installation were supported by gifts from anonymous donors as well as an award from the First Tennessee Foundation.

The AMUM collection in the newly reopened gallery features objects from five culture groups in Western Sudan: the Dogon, Bamana, Senufo, Marka, and Lobi. The art in this exhibition is a small part of the 2008 gift from Martha and Robert Fogelman that includes tradition-based objects representing several cultural groups of West and Central Africa.

The gallery will display examples of the culturally and visually varied field of African art while supporting a new graduate-level art history concentration in the arts of Africa and the African Diaspora.

The diversity of the collection will enable AMUM to host exhibitions that address major themes in African art and Africa’s visual culture, including the study of the continent’s traditional art and Africans’ encounters with the West and the influence on Africans of the Diaspora, the dispersion and modification of African cultures throughout and beyond the continent of Africa.

The study of African art encompasses a number of academic disciplines, including anthropology, art history, and the visual and performing arts of music, dance, and theater.

For more information, call Leslie Luebbers, director of AMUM, at 901-678-2224.

Bongo Stool - Sudan, New Acquisition

This stool masterfully illustrates the preoccupation with the aesthetics of bovine forms shared by pastoral peoples of the Upper Nile region in Sudan. The form is "probably suggested by the shapes of the animals, something in each design resembling the head, limbs and tail," as noted by Captain S. L. Cummins, a British medical officer who served in Sudan at the turn of the century.

If they do echo an animal form, the feet of this stool can be interpreted as an artistic rendition of hooves and fetlocks, while the lugs at each end of the seat may evoke the head and tail. In this stool, one finds a perfect integration of both types of supports: the shallow, receptive curve of the thin seat is gracefully counterbalanced by the tighter curve of the sturdy legs.In the late 19th century, such stools were found in every household and used exclusively by women. An early writer, Schweinfurth, tells us that stools were “used by women…but avoided by men, who regarded every raised seat as an effeminate luxury.” These stools were also used as headrests.

Gorgeous dark, glossy patina and one of the finest extant examples of a Bongo stool.

#11119H: 6 1/2" L: 13 1/2"ex Budrose Collection, USA