Out of Africa
By Rebecca Park, Contributor
Pilipili Mulongoy and Ilunga, Lumbumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pintades
(Guinea fowl), c. 1950, oil on masonite (courtesy of the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution).
I recently paid a visit to the National Museum of African Art, intending to visit the temporary exhibit “Artists in Dialogue: António Ole and Aimé Mpane.” What better opportunity to check out contemporary African art and consider the cultural context and artistic heritage from which it emerged? Unfortunately, the exhibit was closed due to unanticipated work on the building’s exterior. But I still need a story, and I’m still curious about African art, so why not really check out and think about everything else the museum has to offer?
Installed at its current location on the Mall in 1987, the building itself declares a certain message about African art. Through underground passageways, layout around the Smithsonian Castle gardens and architectural design, the museum is intimately linked with other Smithsonian institutions (in this case, the Freer and the Sackler), visually and geographically situating NMAfA and the works it features as connected with other artistic and cultural traditions. The Dark Continent isn’t the mysterious, culturally cut-off foreign land that so much of Western pop culture would have us believe. But at the same time, the collection is set off, given its own unique space, reinforcing just how significant and distinctive the arts (both ancient and contemporary) of Africa are, showing some long overdue respect for the often-overlooked traditions of its peoples.
First stop during any day at the museum would be the Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection. Not only is it the most convenient gallery to visit on sublevel one, but it is, without a doubt, the highlight of what is currently on display at the museum. The couple Paul and Ruth Tishman, who began amassing African art in 1959, sold their collection in 1984 to the Walt Disney Company, who then donated the 525 objects to NMAfA in 2005. The 88 works now on display gives the audience a taste of a little bit of everything the continent has to offer, promoting a diversity of forms, media, purpose, peoples, regions and scale in the objects, all well-documented and explained, exhibited.
The Tishman Collection also offers the most meta-museum moments. Cryptic notes in the exhibit’s introduction (“to acquire works from the major art traditions in the continent, a dream that would be almost impossible to achieve today”; “although the Tishmans’ purchases…reflected the collecting practices of their time”) allude to the perhaps questionable collecting customs that dominated mid-century, where Western imperialism found new footing in the postcolonial world through practices that occasionally bordered on grave-robbing and looting. How did all these remarkable works end up in Washington DC, especially since so many of them were intended to be used in the lives and rituals of still-existent peoples?
Across the hall, “Artful Animals” (through February 21, 2010) dominates. And overpower the casual museum-goer it does, as the family-oriented exhibit overwhelms with the senses with a plethora of bright colors, chirpy display explanations, videos and noise. Maybe it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, a bit too distracting for the serious scholar, but the show does demonstrate how very earnestly NMAfA takes its mission to spread appreciation for African art. Sure, soberly dressing up each item in quiet, dark rooms would easily communicate the idea that this is art, and this is serious. But by reaching out to a younger generation, the museum shares a desire to interest everyone in the continent’s artistic traditions, not always accessible to those who have never before encountered them.
I was excited to visit the last exhibit, on sublevel 3, devoted to African ceramics. So it’s not a surprise that I was initially disappointed to find only a limited number of works on display. The handicrafts of women, spurned in the basement’s basement, no respect shown, despite a collection of pieces that numbers well above a hundred. But each of the objects presented was worth looking at and pouring over, carefully chosen to go on display. Of particular interest was the inclusion of 19th century vessels from the Berber peoples of Algeria’s Kabyle region. With deep red tints and patterns unseen in other galleries, it satisfied my desire to contemplate pottery but left me with a thirst for more Berber art, sadly underrepresented elsewhere in the museum.
Exiting the National Museum of African Art, there are plenty of things to think about, previous conceptions to re-examine, visual delights to savor. Most of all, though, is a sense of appreciation. Appreciation for the works on display and the cultures that produced them, yes, of course. But perhaps more significantly, leaving the museum is to reemerge with a new sense of what African art is, a vast expansion of the notion of the continent’s arts as all those funky masks that inspired Picasso.
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