Culture
Placing African art within global context

Misanet.com / IPS, 24 April - After 30 years in exile at London's Museum of Mankind the British Museum's African collection - one of the world's largest collections of African art - now returns to the museum's main building. Objects from all over the continent are exhibited within a global context.

The new Sainsbury galleries, supported by both the Sainsbury family and the Henry Moore Foundation, is expected to go a long way in placing African art within a global and historical context and in challenging visitors' pre-conceived ideas about Africa.

Divided into five main areas, this initial exhibition contains 600 of the 200,000 pieces, which the British Museum owns. This includes objects from all over the continent. These pieces come from Nigeria and Ghana as well as the traditionally under represented regions such as Northeast Africa and Madagascar. 

Objects from the north and sub-Saharan Africa are displayed together to give visitors a sense of the diversity and quality of the work produced across the continent. This exhibition also has chosen to display pre-20th century art alongside contemporary work. 

Gone are the ethnographic displays of ethnic villages, which marred so many African exhibitions in the past, and in its place is a serious attempt to display African art in an intelligent and respectful context. But, as a curator states, this journey has been a long and difficult one. 

- We moved out of the British museum in 1970 simply because this is the largest collection and we no longer had the adequate space to display the collection, says Chris Spring, a curator at the museum. "Once the British Library moved out we had the opportunity to finally move back to the main building and we jumped at it. In organising the current exhibition we wanted to get away from a confined view of African art," says Spring. 

The exhibition includes everything from beautiful ceramics, to shimmering cloths and majestic bronze. Sculpting is featured alongside dazzling jewellery and ornate weaponry. The beautifully carved knives and gleaming swords are a feature which would perhaps not have been included in African exhibits of the past. 

- During the colonial period weapon production was banned. In the post colonial period this practice resurfaced although in a different guise and much of what is now produced is strictly used for rituals, says Spring. "Despite that fact, galleries have been reluctant to exhibit these pieces and this area of African art has attracted very little study." 

- I am happy that they have been included in our present display, he says. "I think it's important to try and show as many aspects of life as possible. And these pieces made traditionally by men in the village can now stand side by side with the pottery, which was traditionally been made by women. Together these pieces represent a microcosm of African society."

Alongside the pottery and swords are some of the most beautiful sculptures in the world. Dating back to both the Ife and Benin period these pre-Renaissance pieces rival in both beauty and complexity works of art that were produced centuries later. 

One of the most famous pieces is the Queen Mother's Head, which dates back to the 16th century. It is perhaps one of the most renowned pieces of art to have come from the continent. Its majestic stance and life-like features preside over the rest of the collection like a regal spectre from a distant past. 

The other display rooms also contain small treasures such as the Ethiopian textiles made using Chinese silk and harking back to a period when extensive trade existed between the two countries.

The pottery gallery highlights African art's spiritual as well as practical function. Pots exhibited in this room were often made to commemorate every important transition in a person's life. From marriages, to the birth of a child and finally in death they acted as a container for the soul of the owner to take him or her into the life beyond.

Another key ingredient of this beautiful exhibition are the five videos which are shown throughout and which attempt to place the work viewed into a context of the society from which it was produced. The films explain the cultural connections that the work springs from.

Walking among such beautiful work the thorny issue of ownership is ever present. "In the end I suppose it is a political question and one which will ultimately be decided by the museum's board," Spring says. "In the meantime our job as curators is to present this wonderful collection in the best possible way. Personally I would not even attempt to justify how some of the work was acquired. And there have been legitimate questions about access by researchers and art historians." 

- We hope that in the future at least the question of access will be made easier by the purchase of our new building where people will have an opportunity to see work which is not currently on display, he says. "I would suppose also that many with African ancestry and, I would include my children in that, have an opportunity now to learn about their cultural heritage." 

The question of ownership will not be one, which will go away, nor will it be easily answered. But at least for the moment this enormous collection has a new spectacular home.

By Beverly Andrews, IPS

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