To conclude our series, I would like to share one final work. Red Escape II, by Viyé Diba, a Senegalese artist who lives and works in Dakar, is a brand-new acquisition, making its debut in African Innovations. The work was purchased as a joint acquisition by Eugenie and me, on behalf of both the African and Contemporary collections. Thus, it may also find its way into a Contemporary collection rotation at some point in the future.

Viyé Diba (Senegalese, born 1954). Red Escape II, 1999. Cotton strip cloth, paint, sand, wood, metal , 67 x 55 in. (170.2 x 139.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Elliot Picket, by exchange and Alfred T. White Fund, 2011.30. © artist or artist's estate. Photo by Bonnie Morrison.

The painting itself is composed entirely of materials Diba found in Dakar, making the accumulated hands that previously touched these materials part of the work’s story. The piece of painted yellow wood, projecting between the seams of this woven canvas, and the abstract forms that suggest fleeing figures at the top, all evoke the possibility of liberation—from the plane of the canvas, from the strictures of either painting or sculpture or, perhaps, from the history of Dakar itself, a former minor way station in the odious historical trade in human captives.

While currently the only significant abstract contemporary work in the African collection, in its materials and surfaces Red Escape II evokes the centuries of more figurative creative expression that came before it. With its themes of community and freedom, it offers a fitting coda to African Innovations.

Overskirt. Unidentified Kuba artist, late 19th or early 20th century. West Kasai province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Raffia, pigment. Purchased with funds given by Frieda and Milton F. Rosenthal, 1991. 72

However, textiles also present considerable challenges from the point of view of design and conservation. They tend to require a considerable amount of space (at a premium in this installation), and can only be exposed to light for a limited period of time before needing to be rotated out and returned to storage. For a number of reasons, showing the strengths of Brooklyn’s African textile collection was not in the cards, this time around.

Constraints (to mangle a phrase) can sometimes be the mother of invention, however, and we’ve come up with a new means of presenting the variety of African textile design to our visitors, without sacrificing space or museum objects. African Innovations will instead contain a wall of “touch textiles.” These are mid-to-late 20th century examples of textile genres from around the continent, generously donated by a handful of local collectors, which will be installed in a manner that will permit visitors to feel, as well as see, the variety and ingenuity of African fabric work.

This was a really fun portion of the installation on which to work, as this idea allowed us more flexibility than would be otherwise possible in working with museum objects. I was fortunate to have a wide variety of fabrics from which to select.

We ultimately decided to show 16 different examples of “touch textiles”—ranging from machine-printed kangas from East Africa to bark cloth from the Congolese forests and bogolan (mud cloth) from Mali—in a grid pattern, on one wall of the “Arts of the Self” section. Once I had selected our final 16, Matthew contacted a neighborhood tailor to cut and hem the samples to size.

Pause Play Play Prev | Next

I hope you’ll have a chance to come and enjoy some (limited) museum rule-breaking and “please, touch!” our textile wall, once African Innovations opens at the end of next week.

Installation in progress.

Through a series of discussions and plans with Matthew, our Chief Designer, I have come to see that openness as one of the most exciting features of the new layout (instead of a problem to be overcome). The African Innovations galleries will be visible from many different angles within the Great Hall, and will allow visitors to move between the two spaces with ease, while still creating a number of separate galleries within the new installation.

Pause Play Play Prev | Next

The design cleverly use of a series of diagonal walls, aligned with the existing architecture of the building, to create seven distinct spaces within the installation, for each of the exhibition’s themes. These mini-galleries have the benefit of organizing related works in close proximity, while still drawing upon the openness of the original space.

If you’ve been to the museum in the last month, you have been able to watch this process play out in the open, at least in part. In that same spirit, here are a few “behind-the-scenes” shots to fill you in on parts of the construction and re-installation process that have been less visible.

Pause Play Play Prev | Next

Construction that will soon be bringing further major changes to the first floor necessitated moving the African galleries from their current home. Faced with a big move, I jumped at the opportunity to put a new spin on one of our most beloved and important collections.

Three-Headed Figure (Sakimatwemtwe). Unidentified Lega artist, 19th century, South Kivu or Maniema province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Wood, fiber, kaolin. Museum Expedition 1922, Robert B. Woodward Memorial Fund, 22.486

Consisting of over 200 objects in a wide variety of media and genres, including a significant number of works not previously on view, African Innovations aims to build on our groundbreaking history of collecting and exhibiting African art, while moving towards new methods of display and interpretation for the 21st century. The signature work , a three-headed figure (sakimatwemtwe) by an unidentified Lega artist, is emblematic of the theme—with one large head rooted in its own 19th century moment, its additional faces might be said to be looking both back toward the past, and ahead to the future.

African Innovations will arrange the museum’s African galleries chronologically for the first time, to emphasize the continent’s long record of creativity, adaptation, and artistic achievement.

My aim is to emphasize how African art was created to solve important artistic, social, political, and cosmological problems. In so doing, it is my hope that you will further appreciate the works on view as creative solutions with a long history of formal and functional change. I wanted to move away from a primarily geographic presentation that suggested a comparatively static ‘ethnographic present.’

Pause Play Play Prev | Next

Instead, African Innovations will open and close with galleries focusing on “Crossroads Africa.” The first display, beginning in ancient times, establishes Africa’s ongoing history of artistic dialogue with other parts of the world and neighboring cultures, while the last extends this story into the present (and creates Brooklyn’s first dedicated space for contemporary African art). Highlights of the exhibition range from our Nok head, created as early as 550 _B.C.E. to Vessel, by Magdalene Odundo, from 1990. Intriguingly, both our earliest African work and one of our latest were both made from a coiling pottery technique—how’s that for continuity and innovation!?

Skipping Girl. Yinka Shonibare MBE (British, b. 1962). London, United Kingdom, 2009. Life-size fiberglass mannequin, Dutch-wax printed cotton, mixed media. Gift of Edward A. Bragaline and purchase gift of William K. Jacobs, Jr., by exchange and Mary Smith Dorward Fund, 2010.8. © Yinka Shinobare MBE

African Innovations also offers me the opportunity to showcase a number of new acquisitions, such as Skipping Girl, by Yinka Shonibare, whose form evokes the layers of historical connections between European, Asian and African cultures and reveals the constructed nature of “authenticity.”

I’ll leave the other new acquisitions as surprises for the opening in August. Watch this space later this month for further updates on new features in the installation and insights into the construction and design process.

Despite the considerable geographic distance between them, the Loma and the Senufo share not only a similarly named institution in the form of Poro, but also a genre of ‘horizontal’ wooden masks used for their generally protective and law enforcement capacities. Brooklyn has a number of wonderfully potent examples, some of which have (regrettably) not been on view for some time.

Pause Play Play Prev | Next

Extending our reach even slightly further (and in response to an influential question posed in the 1990s in an African art journal—Is there history in horizontal masks?), there is an intriguing case to be made for connections to more well-known horizontal masks in Brooklyn’s collection that have long been on view, and will return later this summer in our new African Innovations re-installation (more on that very soon).

Pause Play Play Prev | Next

Both the Banda mask, by a Baga artist, and the Komo mask, by a Bamana artist, suggest intriguing visual and functional parallels with the Loma Ngafui mask in New Orleans.

Maybe next season?

Ngafui Mask for the Poro Society. Unidentified Loma artist, 19th or early 20th century, Liberia or Guinea. Wood, cotton, feathers, monkey fur, leopard fur, cowrie shells, metal and seeds. New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum purchase: West Freeman Foundation Matching Fund, 72.140.

Series creator David Simon linked that scene in the “Brooklyn Museum” with a story associated with Tootie Montana (a New Orleans legend and “chief of the chiefs” among the city’s Mardi Gras Indians for many years) who once remarked upon seeing a similar mask in New York – “they got that from us.”

While the Ngafui mask in New Orleans is rare and stunning (and, indeed, has been written about my predecessor, William Siegmann, Curator Emeritus of African Art), I would be remiss in my role as cheerleader for all things African art not to point out the related, wonderful masks and other associated works at Brooklyn.

The mask above was used by the Poro society, an initiation society for men which is found in a variety of quite distinct West African societies, including the Loma. The work here that immediately comes to mind is a double-faced staff, likely used by a leader in a Loma Poro society. This work certainly shares in the spectacular crown of feathers to which Albert initially responded.

Pause Play Play Prev | Next

Oracle Figure (Kafigeledjo). Unidentified Senufo artist, late 19th or early 20th century, Korhogo district, Côte d’Ivoire. Cloth, wood, glass beads, feathers. Gift of Fernandez Arman to the Jennie Simpson Educational Collection of African Art, 72.102.3.

A related work, by a Senufo artist, is an oracle figure known as a kafigeledjo. The feathers on this object, also restricted to a senior member of the Poro society among the Senufo, are part of a deliberate “anti-aesthetic,” meant to provoke intense anxiety in the viewer—which makes sense, as these were used to suss out lies and hidden misdeeds.

Perhaps the producers could consider a follow-up episode inside the building—Brooklyn certainly does seem to be on the radar of HBO’s production designers!

This summer, with the help of Connie Jang, an intern with the Digital Collections department (and incomparable prep work by Katie Apsey, our Curatorial Assistant, and a loaned photo backdrop from the Egyptian offices), I’ve started a photo survey of one of our most important sub-collections of African objects—the significant number of works acquired by our curator Stewart Culin during a 1922 Museum-sponsored collecting expedition to Europe. While on this trip, Culin purchased several important pieces from William Oldman and Paul Guillaume, pioneering art dealers in London and Paris, respectively, before making his way to Brussels. There, Culin was introduced to an obscure employee of a local veterinary school named François Poncelet who, through means as yet unknown, had amassed a collection of over 1500 pieces, mostly from the Congo. Culin managed to acquire the entire collection for around $2,000—twice his initial budget, but a shrewd investment, as time has told. In addition to being the foundation for the Museum’s African collection, and the subject of the groundbreaking 1923 exhibition Primitive Negro Art, Chiefly from the Congo, this sub-collection is a crucial historical artifact in its own right, reflecting the creation and circulation of Congolese art at a specific (and comparatively early) time and place.

Single Head Goblet (Mbwoongntey), early 20th century. Wood, 8 1/16 x 3 1/2 in. (20.5 x 9.0 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Museum Expedition 1922, Robert B. Woodward Memorial Fund, 22.1485.

Many of these works have not been previously photographed, and this has also served as a crucial opportunity to review and update our records on these works. Every day in the store room brings with it a new discovery, and I look forward to sharing them with our visitors as the project progresses. You can keep an eye on our progress, by visiting this link.

The islands of the Pacific Ocean are divided into four major cultural regions: Polynesia (“many islands”), Melanesia (“black islands”), Micronesia (“small islands”) and the islands of Southeast Asia. The Museum’s first-floor galleries currently display highlights from its collection of the arts of Polynesia and Island Southeast Asia. The existing installation includes some small but spectacular gems.

From Polynesia, a moko miro figure from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), for example, combines lizard, avian and human characteristics into a form whose past use is still debated among scholars.

Lizard Figure (Moko Miro), unidentified Rapa Nui artist. 19th century, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Chile. Wood. 15 3/4 x 3 x 2 in. (40 x 7.6 x 5.1 cm) Museum Expedition 1941, Frank L. Babbott Fund, 41.1277.

The enigmatic and thoroughly engaging figure from the Nicobar Islands (actually located in the eastern Indian Ocean), is possibly a henta-koi, or “scare devil,” intended to keep malevolent spirits at bay. The figure stands as an exceedingly rare highlight of the collection—not only is it quite compelling on a formal level, but it also remains one of perhaps less than a handful of such sculptures known.

Figure, unidentified Nicobar Islands artist. 19th century, Nicobar Islands, Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. Wood, shell, pigment. 29 x 17 1/2 x 25 1/2 in. (73.7 x 44.5 x 64.8 cm). Ella C. Woodward Memorial Fund and the Museum Collection Fund, 63.57.

However, our complete collection of Pacific Islands art goes well beyond what is currently on display. The current, 1st Floor gallery is a remnant from a larger installation that once included part of the space formerly occupied by the Hall of the Americas. The Pacific collection also includes tapa cloths, jewelry, decorated weapons, and ceramic bowls, but the preponderant emphasis is on ceremonial sculpture, especially from Papua New Guinea. The arts of Melanesia—especially the Sepik River region of New Guinea, as well as New Ireland and Vanuatu—are well-represented. One of the great benefits of the Web, from the point of view of permanent collection stewardship, is the ability to keep such works in the public eye.

Mask (Kavat), unidentified Baining artist. Late 19th or early 20th century, Gazelle Peninsula, East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. Bark cloth, pigment, cane. 50 x 11 x 29 in. (127 x 27.9 x 73.7 cm). Gift of Thomas and Katherine Brush, 1994.142.

The breadth of our Melanesian collection, in particular, merits further exploration. The Baining mask, is an exceedingly expressive masquerade genre, danced at night amid roaring fires and drumming. A tatanua mask, from New Ireland, is one of a rich sub-collection of objects related to the malagan funerary complex.

Mask (Tatanua), unidentified New Ireland artist. 19th century, New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea. Wood, rattan, bark cloth, fiber, Turbo petholatus opercula, pigment. 15 1/4 x 9 x 12 in. (38.7 x 22.9 x 30.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum Collection, X1033.

Finally, this headdress, from the Huli people of the Highlands region of Papua New Guinea, remains a spectacularly ostentatious example of the modes of self-presentation, including body painting and feather headwear, that prevail in that region. (This headdress would have been worn on ceremonial occasions, such as dances, or by an initiate of a bachelors’ society.)

Headdress and Headband, unidentified Huli artist. 20th century, western region, Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. Human hair, feathers, cuscus fur, porcupine quills, reptile skin, dried flowers, button, string. 18 x 15 3/4 x 7 in. (45.7 x 40 x 17.8 cm). Gift of Marcia and John Friede and Mrs. Melville W. Hall, 87.218.64a-b.

These are a small sample of the sorts of highlights that, with the help of Katie Apsey, Curatorial Assistant, our team in the Registrar’s office and the Digital Lab, are now available to peruse on the site. Come check out our 1st floor gallery, and then explore further online.

Lulua. Mother with Child (Luphinga Lua Limpe), 19th century. Wood, 14 x 3 3/8 x 3 1/2 in. (35.6 x 8.6 x 8.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 50.124

The Lulua mother and child figure (lupingu lua luimpe) was featured in the exhibition Art and Power in the Central African Savanna, which was organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art, and travelled to the Menil Collection, in Houston, and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, in San Francisco. The mother and child figure featured prominently, among an assortment of figurative sculpture from the cultures of the southern Congolese grasslands, including the Chokwe, Songye and Luba, in addition to the Lulua—art traditions that are all well represented in Brooklyn’s collections.

Lulua. Mother with Child (Luphinga Lua Limpe), 19th century. Wood, 14 x 3 3/8 x 3 1/2 in. (35.6 x 8.6 x 8.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 50.124

Lupingu lua luimpe figures such as this were used by a cult among the Lulua, called Bwanga bwa Cibola, which aimed to cure infertility. Women who were having trouble conceiving could be initiated into the cult, after which they would receive a lupingu lua luimpe figure, which was designed to ward off any ill intentions that might be directed her way. With incredibly elaborate, finely carved scarification patterns on the mother’s face, shoulders and back, and an otherworldly grace to her facial features, Brooklyn’s piece remains an unrivaled masterpiece.

Salampasu. Standing Female Figure (Tulume), late 19th century. Wood, pigment, 14 3/16 x 4 5/16 x 3 9/16 in. (36 x 11 x 9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum Collection, by exchange, and Designated Purchase Fund, 74.32

While the Lulua figure was making its way around the U.S., its place in the gallery was held by a Salampasu style standing female figure (tulume), from a neighboring cultural region. The face of this carved figure exhibits many of the same distinctive facial features found in Salampasu masking traditions. This figure’s hat, like masks from the region, may have originally held feathers. Whereas masks are used in public performance among the Salampasu, figurative sculptures are either privately owned or used in various religious cults. Tulume figures are quite rare, and since little research has been done among the Salampasu, hypotheses about the role of sculptures in this Central African culture remain highly speculative.

Left: René Gaffé. La sculpture au Congo belge. Paris: Éditions du Cercle d’Art, 1945. Right: Brooklyn Museum. Masterpieces of African Art (exh. cat.). New York, 1954.

The Lulua piece remains one of the iconic works of Brooklyn’s African holdings. (Indeed, while it has only traveled about once a decade, it has been published over 20 times – likely more.) While we were happy to share the work with new audiences in Cleveland, Houston and San Francisco, we are exceedingly pleased to have it back home.

For more on the Lulua mother and child, and other iconic works in Brooklyn’s African collection, consult our new catalog – African Art: a Century at Brooklyn Museum. William C. Siegmann (ed.), Kevin D. Dumouchelle and Joseph Adande. New York: Prestel, 2009.