This month's museum pick...

Museum for African Art, Queens, New York

By Patrick Totty

Before the European colonial era, art among most sub-Saharan Africans was something people created as a matter of course. There were no self-aware, self-defined “artists” – people who did only art. Instead, people created masks, figurines and statues in the normal course of religious and daily life.

In some ways, African artisans were like the folk artists of New Mexico – naïve, direct, expressive and unschooled, therefore able to create works of great power. 

The Europeans did not see it that way at first, dismissing the creations of tribal peoples as primitive and lacking in sophistication. That attitude changed by the early 20^th century when the West had finished exploring the limits of art that was representational in an almost photographic sense. Photography had forced art into a more impressionistic mode, setting the stage for art that was even more abstract and less concerned with the depiction of outer, rather than inner, form.

Seeking a new source of inspiration, European artists and aesthetes saw great energy and power in African art. Its lines and conventions began to show up in western art, particularly in Picasso’s cubism. He would later say that African art exerted a powerful influence on him.

Americans and Europeans began seriously collecting the art, mimicking in some ways Lord Elgin’s removal of portions of the Parthenon’s frieze to England. But whatever overtones of colonialism or imperialism such collections carried, they also saved a lot of art that would otherwise have perished.

One particularly good African art collection is in the hands of the Museum for African Art, which recently relocated temporarily from Manhattan to Queens. In moving to a space in Long Island City, the museum joins the Museum of Modern Art in transferring its collection to New York City’s thirds biggest borough while awaiting the construction of new Manhattan facilities.

The museum’s great strength is its mask collection. Masks in sub-Saharan African culture are seen and used as links to the spirit world, honoring ancestors and assisting in the handing down of tribal history and lore. There’s also an element of humor and entertainment to them – not all masks serve a heavy purpose. The masks are often used in dramas, with good guys, bad guys and funny guys well represented.

Masks are stylized to the extent that the reasons and means for making them remain relatively unchanged from generation to generation,. But within those bounds, the variety of faces is astounding. There doesn’t seem to be a limit to what artists can conjure up even when working within a narrow set of conventions.

The museum has an extensive program of Africa-related pubic events, including musical performances, storytelling, workshops, films, lectures, dancing lessons and more. It also offers organized tours to Africa. The article below discusses those trips.

Africa is People 

By Jerry Vogel, Senior Advisor, Museum for African Art

Since 1986 the Museum for African Art has been organizing trips to Africa through its Discover Africa program. The trips emphasize culture rather than wildlife, though we have been known to stop and look at an elephant or a giraffe if one is walking by.

Our focus is to make the art we display in our galleries more alive and more comprehensible by seeing it in its context. The aesthetic beauty of a mask can be breathtaking when it is admired in a gallery, but there is a special excitement in seeing it dancing as part of a full costume in a village, surrounded by singers, musicians and a dancing throng of women. The sheer joy of the whole village is contagious and often turns our group from spectators to active participants.

Even I, a non-dancer, have found myself dancing in the center of the village wearing a mud-cloth cap and holding an ancient flintlock rifle. The worst part of the experience, of course, is seeing the videos shot by everyone in the group.

African cities tend to look alike, with their often-handsome western-style public buildings. We visit these and spend considerable time at the markets, which are the real centers of African life. Most exciting are visits to artists, art dealers and old friends in their homes and workshops where there is time for relaxed conversation and an exchange of points of view.

After a couple of days, we leave the city and travel up-country to towns that provide easy access to the villages where we have longtime relationships with people. These friendships assure us the kind of welcome not possible for strangers. An example is the Ivorian village of Tanoh Sakassou, home to a cooperative of women potters. I have been a friend with them since 1984, and they treat a museum group as old friends rather than as foreign guests. They are invited into people’s houses, hold hands with children, are taught how to play mankala (the classic African game) and plied with food and drink.

Often, we return in the evening when, if there’s a full moon, children dance and play games, and music fills the air. People who want to get to taste palm wine and get to feel like members of the community rather than outsiders. This is, perhaps, what our people most emphasize at the end of a trip: the extraordinary way that Africans have of making you feel like a member of their family. 

Where possible, we take advantage of ceremonies that are being performed. If this is not possible, we commission performances of masks dancing. In these villages, where outsiders are still something of a rarity, a dance for a group is taken seriously. Often, it must be preceded by the traditional sacrifice which must be offered to the masks before they will dance, and always every man, woman and child is there to dance, roar with delight and have a marvelous time. For me, Africa is people.

On a practical level, we restrict the size of our groups to 12 people, so as to maintain relaxed interactions. We usually visit one country in depth, rather than trying to hit several in a two-week period. Over the years, we have visited Mali, Ivory Cost, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Ethiopia. This year, we’re planning to go to South Africa.

We stay in comfortable, western-style hotels in towns, complete with air-conditioning, hot water and European-style food. (For the adventurous, there are lots of authentic local restaurants serving grilled fish or chicken.) On a regular basis, the group gets together for lectures on local history and art, and explanations are constant throughout the day. There are many opportunities to shop for the rich variety of modern and traditional crafts. Everyone takes photographs, and many people make videos. While the unexpected is frequent in Africa, people relax and leave the worries to us.