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Release date: Feb. 6, 2008 Carlos Museum Reopens African Galleries
Beginning Feb. 9, Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum reopened its African Galleries in conjunction with the opening of the major traveling exhibition "Lost Kingdoms of the Nile: Nubian Treasures from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston." The African Galleries exhibition will include well-known favorites from the permanent collection along with many new pieces that will offer insight into African artistic expression in their variety of forms, functions and cultures of origin. Drawn from the permanent collection, recent acquisitions and loans from private collections, the African Galleries exhibition is organized as a theme-based exploration of the many ways to see and experience African art. Curator Jessica Stephenson says this new installation of the African collection "reflects new developments made in the past several years. We have focused on acquiring or borrowing objects from regions previously overlooked, such as Mali, and East and Southern Africa, so the exhibition better represents Africa's tremendous artistic variety. In this installation we expand the definition of art to better reflect African value systems, so the viewer will also encounter ceramics, textiles and jewelry traditions." The first section of the exhibition features a cross-cultural display of African masks, with supplemental materials including film clips to further illustrate the role of the mask in performance. The exhibition also includes objects originally intended to be private, such as those made to commemorate the dead, as well as secular African art generally made to be seen in public to communicate ideas about status, wealth and identity. The exhibition concludes with several exquisitely carved objects that were intentionally made as art-for-art's sake, a popular practice by African artists from the colonial period onward. Highlights of the exhibition include: • The Kom Beaded Bowl Figure, a well-known piece from the permanent collection. • A variety of masks including the Bamana Kono Society Mask encrusted with sacrificial materials and amulets, the boldly patterned Yoruba Textile Egungun Masquerade, the delicate Igbo Maiden Spirit Mask, and the Djula Metal Mask. • The cut metal Asen from Ouidah, Republic of Benin, originally housed within a domestic shrine viewed exclusively by family members. • Art from the colonial period onward including the Mangbetu Figurative Vessel, the Akan Colon Figure, and the Loango Carved Ivory Sculpture, all objects created for the purely visual viewing pleasure of all within Africa and abroad. Related Information Carlos Museum Exhibits Some of Africa's Greatest Archaeological Treasures ### Emory University (www.emory.edu) is one of the nation’s leading private research universities and a member of the Association of American Universities. Known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities, Emory is ranked as one of the country's top 20 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, the state's largest and most comprehensive health care system. Subscribe to News@Emory RSS feeds for automatic updates of the latest news at Emory. |
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