{"id":7851,"date":"2021-03-25T17:12:33","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T17:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antonvandergulik.nl\/?page_id=7851"},"modified":"2025-02-11T16:32:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T16:32:20","slug":"archief","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.antonvandergulik.nl\/en\/archief\/","title":{"rendered":"ARCHIVE"},"content":{"rendered":"
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THERE ARE ALSO CONCERNS ABOUT A REFUND OF AFRICAN ART<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted December 14, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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France President Macron wants to return 26 works looted by the French army to Benin after a critical report on heritage. European museums and art dealers are concerned.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The throne of King Gu\u00e9zo (1818-1858), the doors of the palace of B\u00e9hanzin or the 'anthropomorphic' statues (half animal, half human) of the princes of Dahomey: they still stand in prominent places in the Mus\u00e9e du Quai Branly -Jacques Chirac in Paris. But not for long - 26 works captured by the French army must return \"without delay\" to the West African country of Benin, according to French President Emmanuel Macron.<\/span><\/p>\n

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That announcement came on Friday shortly after he received a report ordered by him about the restitution of colonial looted art from French museums. On a visit to Burkina Faso last year, Macron had already argued for \u201ctemporary or permanent restitution of African heritage [\u2026] within five years\u201d. The Senegalese economist and writer Felwine Sarr and the French art historian B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Savoy write in their advice that this is possible, provided that French legislation is radically amended. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/span>Captured by conquest<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The heritage law still states that French museum collections are \u201cinalienable\u201d and therefore individual objects cannot be returned. But advisers Sarr and Savoy want an adjustment that will allow a bilateral agreement with an African country that wants art to be returned to have stolen (or purchased well below market price) a commission of experts to investigate whether such restitution can be made. history is 'appropriate'. <\/span><\/p>\n

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That is not necessary for the works from Benin. Sufficient research has been done on this at Quai Branly. They were captured in 1892 by the French Colonel Alfred Am\u00e9d\u00e9e Dodds during the bloody conquest of the kingdom of Dahomey.<\/span><\/p>\n

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After part of the collection was already shown in Benin in 2006, the country submitted an official restitution application in 2016. This was immediately rejected by the government of then president Fran\u00e7ois Hollande. But Macron, for whom restitution of looted art is the beginning of a \"new relationship\" with former colonies, now hears the request. \u201cAfrican youth in Africa should have access to their own heritage,\u201d he says. The rapidly developing Benin is currently building several modern museums.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Between 85 and 90 percent of Africa's cultural heritage is no longer on the continent, Sarr and Savoy estimate. In French museums there are about 90,000 pieces from countries in sub-Saharan Africa: the majority in Paris, but also in port cities such as Cherbourg, Le Havre and La Rochelle. \"It is not the case that we are going to empty our museums to fill others,\" Savoy said in an interview with NRC last month. Each restitution request must be viewed separately and the authors do not expect all their recommendations to be fully adopted by Macron. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The French president wants a summit in Paris at the beginning of 2019 where representatives of African countries and those of France and other European countries with looted art will 'together shape the new relationship' and the 'exchange policy' he proposes. By temporizing, he seems to accommodate museums elsewhere in Europe and, above all, the art trade.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Heus manifest<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Because the concerns there are great. Former French Minister of Culture and former museum director Jean-Jacques Aillagon called the report in Le Figaro a \u201creal manifesto\u201d which not only pays little attention to critical opposing views, but also overlooks the \u201cuniversality\u201d of the museum's collections. The specialized Belgian lawyer Yves-Bernard Debie called the report to the AFP news agency \u201cunusable\u201d because \u201cno art dealer was consulted\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Traders fear, in the words of the well-known collector H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Leloup, that not only Western armies, but also pieces purchased during the colonial era will be reclaimed. \"Anyone who says that these goods have been looted [\u2026] does not know that there were African art dealers [at the time] and that this market was already known to European museums,\" she writes in the weekly Le Point. \"It is also a condescending view, implying that Africans could not appreciate the value of their own heritage.\"<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: NRC, Peter Vermaas, 26-11-2018 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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SENEGAL UNVEILS CHINA-FUNDED MUSEUM OF BLACK CIVILISATIONS <\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on December 14, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Senegalese President Macky Sall inaugurated the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar on Thursday. The establishment intended to celebrate the achievements of the black man from the beginnings of humanity to the present day, is a fifty two-year-old dream come true.<\/span><\/p>\n

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At the opening ceremony held in the Grand National Theater, guests were treated to a show combining tradition and modernity, tributes to ancestors, the great figures of black civilisations, from Martin Luther King to Thomas Sankara, and the \u201cSenegalese skirmishers\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Museum of Black Civilizations is indeed joining a long-term dynamic. Dynamics of confluences and symphony between African and Afro-descendants, united in the affirmation of their values of culture and civilization,\u201d said Senegalese President, Macky Sall. <\/span><\/p>\n

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The museum\u2019s catalogue is pan-African with works not only from Africa but also from the Caribbean. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The inauguration comes at a time when the cultural world in French-speaking Africa is in turmoil after the French authorities resolved to return part of the continent\u2019s heritage.<\/span><\/p>\n

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UNESCO hopes that this initiative will contribute to advancing the aspirations of Africans to better appropriate their memory.<\/span><\/p>\n

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For his part, Ernesto O. Ramirez, Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO said, \u201cThis museum is a response to the aspirations of African children to better understand their memory and other cultures. It is also an important step towards the realization of an Africa with a strong cultural identity: a common heritage, values and ethics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea of a museum of Black Civilizations was nursed by first Senegalese President L\u00e9opold S\u00e9dar Senghor in 1966. Financed by China at more than 30 million euros, the structure has a capacity for 18,000 exhibits.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: Africanews.com, 7-12-2018 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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BELGIUM\u2019S REVAMPED AFRICA MUSEUM TRIGGERS REQUEST BY DRC<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted December 14, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The reopening of Belgium\u2019s Africa Museum, a former colonial institution holding one of the world\u2019s largest collections of African art, has led to calls by the Democratic Republic of the Congo for many of its artefacts to be repatriated.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Joseph Kabila, who has been in power in DRC since his father\u2019s assassination in 2001, said he was seeking to bring back art and documents so they could be held in a new Congolese national museum being funded by the South Korean government.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Belgium\u2019s Africa Museum is located in Tervuren, on the outskirts of Brussels, near the site where a \u201chuman zoo\u201d of 267 Congolese men, women and children was staged on the orders of King Leopold in 1897. It has been closed for five years to allow for a \u20ac75m (\u00a367m) renovation and \u201cdecolonisation\u201d process. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The institution, whose 11,000 sq ft of exhibition space is now double what it was, is reopening on Saturday in the presence of Belgian and Congolese dignitaries, to tell the story of Africa and its colonisation through the eyes of Africans, with a \u201cvery critical\u201d view of the racist and cruel Belgian regime in Congo.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In an interview with the Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir, Kabila said he would be seeking restitution of works and documents next year. \u201cIt\u2019s in progress, but to do so we are waiting for the end of the works and the opening of our own museum, in partnership with South Korea,\u201d Kabila told the paper.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will also rehabilitate our museum in Lubumbashi. The request for restitution will obviously be on the table. One month before the end of the work, which is scheduled for the month of June, there will be an official request.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Kabila has remained in power despite his second term ending in 2016. He is backing his former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary in long-delayed elections in December. Observers describe Shadary as a political non-entity who will be easily manipulated by Kabila.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Initially called the Museum of the Congo and more recently known as the Royal Museum for Central Africa, the newly renamed Africa Museum has been radically remodelled after nearly a century in which its permanent exhibition barely changed.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Guido Gryseels, the director general at the museum, who has been masterminding the changes, told the Guardian he was open to the return of works, but it needed to be clarified as to what was legally or illegally acquired during Belgium\u2019s hold on Congo between 1908 and June 1960, when the country won its independence. It had been a personal colony of King Leopold II from 1885, after which the state had taken over. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He said: \u201cI was in Congo last month and I expected that question to come next year because there is currently no museum in Congo. They don\u2019t even have a storage place and the director told me himself and in public that his priority was to conserve the collection that they still have. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThere are 85,000 artefacts in Kinshasa, stored in rather in difficult conditions, not more than a barn actually. But of course the Koreans are currently building a new museum, that museum is opening next year and that will change the situation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cClearly if Congo asks at that moment for return of some objects, I am certainly willing to consider that,\u201d Gryseels said. \u201cIt is not normal that 80% of the African cultural heritage is in Europe. It is basically their culture, their identity, their history. We need to have a very open attitude. The question is under what conditions. How do we define what was legally acquired and what was not legally acquired?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cInitially they talked about military occupation, military raids and plundering and all the objects coming from that. Now they are talking about everything that was acquired during the colonial period. But was all that illegally acquired or not? We need to do some more work on that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: theguardian.com, Daniel Boffey 8-12-2018 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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SENEGAL UNVEILS CHINA-FUNDED MUSEUM OF BLACK CIVILISATIONS <\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on December 14, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Senegalese President Macky Sall inaugurated the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar on Thursday. The establishment intended to celebrate the achievements of the black man from the beginnings of humanity to the present day, is a fifty two-year-old dream come true.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

At the opening ceremony held in the Grand National Theater, guests were treated to a show combining tradition and modernity, tributes to ancestors, the great figures of black civilisations, from Martin Luther King to Thomas Sankara, and the \u201cSenegalese skirmishers\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Museum of Black Civilizations is indeed joining a long-term dynamic. Dynamics of confluences and symphony between African and Afro-descendants, united in the affirmation of their values of culture and civilization,\u201d said Senegalese President, Macky Sall. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s catalogue is pan-African with works not only from Africa but also from the Caribbean. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The inauguration comes at a time when the cultural world in French-speaking Africa is in turmoil after the French authorities resolved to return part of the continent\u2019s heritage.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

UNESCO hopes that this initiative will contribute to advancing the aspirations of Africans to better appropriate their memory.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Ernesto O. Ramirez, Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO said, \u201cThis museum is a response to the aspirations of African children to better understand their memory and other cultures. It is also an important step towards the realization of an Africa with a strong cultural identity: a common heritage, values and ethics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea of a museum of Black Civilizations was nursed by first Senegalese President L\u00e9opold S\u00e9dar Senghor in 1966. Financed by China at more than 30 million euros, the structure has a capacity for 18,000 exhibits.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: Africanews.com, 7-12-2018 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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HAUNTED BY COLONIAL PAST, BELGIUM\u2019S AFRICA MUSEUM REOPENS AFTER REVAMP <\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on December 14, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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TERVUREN (AFP).- Belgium\u2019s Africa Museum reopened on Saturday after a five-year restoration to repackage its looted treasures with a critical view of the country\u2019s brutal colonial past.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo hailed a \u201chistoric moment\u201d and said it would open \u201ca new chapter\u201d in Belgian-African relations.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The reopening of the former Royal Museum for Central Africa in the Tervuren Palace outside Brussels comes amid a renewed European debate about returning stolen artefacts.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to return 26 cultural artefacts to Benin \u201cwithout delay\u201d, a move likely to put pressure on other former colonial powers to return African artworks to their countries of origin.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Macron said the decision should not be seen as an isolated or symbolic case and proposed a conference in Paris next year to discuss an \u201cexchange policy\u201d for African treasures.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cRestitution should no longer be taboo,\u201d De Croo said on Saturday adding, however, that any returns should be dependant on certain conservation conditions being met.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cIt is clear that this implies a respectful attitude on the part of the African authorities with regard to this artistic heritage,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Before it closed for refurbishment in 2013, visitors to the Belgian museum were greeted by a statue uncritically depicting white European missionaries \u201cbringing civilisation to Congo\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The museum\u2019s research team insists the exhibits will now take a much more critical approach to the depredations of King Leopold II and his agents in Congo. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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With the help of multimedia displays and detailed captions, visitors will be encouraged to take a critical view and to see colonialism through African eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The museum\u2019s academic experts say there is no attempt to cover up the past, but rather to use the collection of 125,000 ethnographic objects more educationally.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Despite the new approach more in keeping with Belgium\u2019s multicultural present, the revamp has not been without controversy.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Activists are demanding a proper memorial to seven Congolese who died in 1897 after being brought to Belgium as living exhibits. They are buried near the Tervuren estate.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Paula Polanco told AFP her group, Intal-Congo, wanted them to be recognised as \u201cvictims of a colonialist crime\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Belgium\u2019s current king, Philippe, meanwhile declined an invitation to the reopening.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Belgian colonies, run as a private royal estate by Leopold II, covered lands now included in independent Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/span><\/p>\n

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These countries have suffered a turbulent modern history and for European experts, in DR Congo\u2019s case at least, lack premises to properly house a national history collection.<\/span><\/p>\n

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DR Congo\u2019s President Joseph Kabila, however, has said he plans to formally request the return of art and records before his country\u2019s own museum opens next year.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: Artdaily.com\u00a9 Agence France-Presse <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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BLACK HERITAGE MUSEUM, \u2018CRUCIBLE OF CREATIVITY\u2019, OPENS IN DAKAR<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on 7 December, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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DAKAR (AFP).- A museum showcasing black heritage from the dawn of time to the modern era opened in the Senegalese capital Dakar on Thursday.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The opening came as African countries press harder for the restitution of artwork from their former colonial masters \u2014 and as France made its first steps in that direction, pledging to return artworks to Benin.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Museum of Black Civilisations will foster the \u201cdialogue of cultures\u201d and offer a \u201cnew view of Africa and its diaspora, which recognises our part in the great human adventure,\u201d Senegalese President Macky Sall said as he opened the museum. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cToday rekindles in us the precursors of pan-Africanism and African identity,\u201d Sall said after cutting the symbolic ribbon at the ceremony. Among the guests was Chinese Culture Minister Luo Shugang, whose country financed the project to the tune of 30 million euros ($34 million). <\/span><\/p>\n

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Spread over 14,000 square metres (150,000 square feet), the museum has a capacity to house 18,000 pieces, said museum director Hamady Bocoum.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Both Bocoum and the museum\u2019s lead scientist Ibrahima Thioub said the collection, which includes megaliths dating back more than 1,700 years ago alongside contemporary art, would both honour the past and look to the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It should not be \u201ca place of nostalgia but a crucible of creativity, a factory of self-esteem,\u201d said Thioub, rector of Dakar\u2019s Cheikh-Anta-Diop University.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A dream fulfilled<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Such a museum was the dream of Senegal\u2019s first president Leopold Sedar Senghor, among the drivers of the Negritude literary movement born in the 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The poet, who was Senegal\u2019s president from 1960 to 1980, spoke of it at the first World Festival of Black Arts, held in Dakar in 1966.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in the continuity of history,\u201d Sall said Thursday. \u201cThrough the ages, Africa invented, fashioned and transformed, thus constantly participating in the flow of innovations. Our duty is to remain vigilant sentinels of the heritage of the ancients.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The museum is among several new \u2014 or overhauled \u2014 facilities springing up around Africa that bolster growing demands for the restitution of artworks spirited out of the continent since colonial times. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Late last month France announced it would return 26 cultural artefacts to Benin. It was a first gesture acting on the findings of a study commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron on repatriating African treasures held by French museums.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Senegal was quick to call for the restitution of some 10,000 pieces of Senegalese art from France.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ivory Coast followed suit the next day, asking for the return of around 100 works of art.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In a reflection of the museum\u2019s embrace of the ages, Thursday\u2019s ceremony was followed by a show featuring traditional music and dance as well as rap and slam performances.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The hundreds of guests also heard homages to giants of black civilisation including American civil rights hero Martin Luther King and Burkinabe revolutionary Thomas Sankara.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: Artdaily.org, Agence France-Presse <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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BELGIAN KING SKIPS RE-OPENING OF \u2018LOOTED\u2019 AFRICA MUSEUM<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on December 7, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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BRUSSELS (AFP).- The king of the Belgians will not attend the re-opening of his country\u2019s notorious Africa Museum, for fear of being dragged into the debate about the continent\u2019s looted treasures.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The museum is to re-open at the weekend after a five-year refurbishment meant to better explain Belgium\u2019s brutal colonial-era exploitation of the royal territory in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Previously, the former Royal Museum for Central Africa had a reputation for outdated exhibits that minimised or even glorified the crimes of Belgian colonists against Africans under their rule.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Curators now hope that the museum will put the art and artefacts of the era in proper context, but the re-opening coincides with a new debate on whether Belgium should hold the pieces at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

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And King Philippe, whose royal ancestor Leopold II founded Belgium\u2019s African colony and exploited it as a personal private venture, wants no part in the argument over whether they should be sent back.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe debate about restitution is still ongoing, it hasn\u2019t been decided. The climate is not quite right for a visit. The king does not get mixed up in ongoing debates,\u201d a palace spokesman told AFP.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Government-run museums in several European former colonial powers have come under pressure from anti-racism activists to return objects that were taken from Africa. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Defenders of the museums argue that, however they were acquired, the cultural treasures will be better cared for and displayed to more visitors in wealthier European collections.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Africa Museum was refurbished at a cost of 66 million euros and groups representing Belgians of African descent have denounced it as little more than a \u201ctrophy cabinet\u201d for looters.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mireille-Tsheusi Robert of the Bamko association said the government should set up an expert committee to determine as best as possible the exact origin of the items.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are falling behind the curve, internationally,\u201d she told national broadcaster RTBF. \u201cI will not set foot in that museum, because for me it would be like dancing and merry-making around a tomb.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Africa Museum will reopen to the public on Sunday, after a planned ceremony on Saturday that will now not have its royal guest of honour.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cIt is going to be a magnificent museum, but for us it is a little premature to go there,\u201d the palace spokesman said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: Artdaily.com,  Agence France-Presse <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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\u2018OCEANIA,\u2019 ART OF THE ISLANDS<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on 7 December, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The wonders of the Royal Academy\u2019s \u201cOceania\u201d exhibition begin with the evocation of a myriad islands, scattered over more than a third of the earth\u2019s surface. \u201cTell them what it\u2019s like \/ to see the entire ocean level with the land,\u201d recites Kathy Jet\u00f1il-Kijiner, in a video in the first room, from her poem about the Marshall Islands:<\/span><\/p>\n

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tell them we are descendants<\/em><\/p>\n

of the finest navigators in the world<\/em><\/p>\n

tell them our islands were dropped<\/em><\/p>\n

from a basket<\/em><\/p>\n

carried by a giant<\/em><\/p>\n

tell them we are the hollow hulls<\/em><\/p>\n

of canoes as fast as the wind<\/em><\/p>\n

slicing through the pacific sea<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cOceania\u201d is not the historical, ethnographic show that Western museum-goers might expect. At the entrance a shimmering wave of blue material cascades from the ceiling. Titled Kiko Moana, this flowing wave uses ancient techniques of weaving, embroidery, layering, and cutting, but it\u2019s a contemporary work in polyethylene and cotton, created by four Maori women from the Mata Aho Collective in New Zealand who have also compiled an online archive of stories about the supernatural spirits of the waters. Old and new technologies meet.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A constant oscillation between tradition and modernity runs through the exhibition, organized jointly with the Mus\u00e9e du Quai Branly\u2014Jacques Chirac in Paris, which brings together objects from over twenty European museums as well as from New Zealand. The curators, Peter Brunt and Nicholas Thomas, insist that the arts of the Pacific should not be seen as idealized historical objects. Instead, their \u201creal meaning\u201d lies in the successive transactions from the eighteenth century to today\u2014as gifts, objects of trade, and trophies of anthropologists and collectors. If this feels like a saga of plunder, \u201cOceania\u201d makes it clear that exchange is a two-way process, and although the show marks the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook\u2019s first voyage in 1768, its focus is not on Western expeditions but on the indigenous art of the diverse island cultures themselves. <\/span><\/p>\n

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For the islanders, the sea is their home: most dwellings are built on the water, except for those of communities in the uplands of the largest islands. But the ocean is also a road. Tahitian cosmological charts show the ancestors sailing star canoes across the heavens, the creator god Ta\u2019aroa making his body into the first canoe and his descendants skimming over the waves to bring groups of islands up from the deep. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The actual canoes displayed, floating against deep blue walls, are objects of strange beauty. A shark-fisher\u2019s canoe from Wuvulu, north of New Guinea, dug from the trunk of a breadfruit tree, has piercing finials echoing the shark\u2019s fins. Nguzunguzu, a figurehead from a nineteenth-century war canoe from the Solomon Islands, stares out into the room, holding a pigeon, valued for its ability to fly straight to other islands over great distances. Weather charms, woven around stingray spines, conjure up the great navigators from the Marshall Islands, whose exquisite stick charts, delicate assemblages of wood and fiber and cowrie shells, were mnemonic devices to help them navigate the swells and currents.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The settlement of the Pacific Islands began around 30,000 years ago, but the origin of their varied yet connected cultures stems from the time of the Lapita peoples, who settled the archipelagos of Melanesia and Polynesia around 1350 BCE, finally reaching Hawai\u2019i in the north, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the east, and New Zealand in the south between 800 and 1200 AD. One striking wooden figure from Aitutaki in the Cook Islands represents an ancestor who arrived in the canoe of the navigator Ru. Her head-to-foot tattoos tell of the founding canoes, but also of the birth channel and the ways of learning to be a woman\u2014different forms of beginning.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ancestral memory and ritual have always been central to island life and, at the opening of this exhibition, representatives from across Oceania joined a procession across London to perform ceremonies blessing the works on display. One room, titled \u201cMaking Places,\u201d is filled with emblems rooted in place and community. Decorated beams carry carved birds and fish, while extraordinary gable sculptures cast shadows on the walls, including a slim, painted figure from Lake Sentani in West Papua mounted on a huge fish. In all places, at all seasons, the spirits appear, embodied in dynamic carvings, shields, armor, and ceremonial dance wands, clubs and costumes and dramatic masks, like the huge-eyed Kavat mask of the Baining people from New Britain, Papua New Guinea.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The sense of mana, a spiritual power or force connected with authority, is strong in these pieces, and the gods take many forms. Moai Havas from Rapa Nui, is a black, pock-marked hulk of basalt: the name can mean \u201cdirty,\u201d \u201crejected,\u201d or \u201clost,\u201d and it\u2019s hard not to feel that this mournful figure, collected on Easter Island in 1868, should return to join its fellows. Other startling images range from the tubular \u2019Oro, from the Society Islands, woven in coconut fiber, or the fierce, lavishly carved Ki\u2019i from Hawai\u2019i to the austere, startlingly modernist-looking Tino aitu from the Caroline Islands. One can see how the sight of these figures, then labeled loosely, along with Indigenous African works, as \u201cprimitive art,\u201d exercised such a powerful influence on European artists like Picasso, Modigliani, Brancusi, and Henry Moore. Their simplicity and boldness, mask-like faces and robust forms\u2014entirely at odds with Western convention\u2014set these European artists suddenly free, as if launched into an entirely different mode of expression and power.<\/span><\/p>\n

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That potent artistic exchange, leaping between cultures and reworking ancient forms in a new present, is in tune with the dynamic of art within Oceania itself. The exhibition illustrates the long tradition in which families, friends, communities, and islands have exchanged gifts: necklaces in whale ivory, shells, and seeds, patterned and decorated barkcloth, and patchwork quilts. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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These exchanges brought prestige, eased negotiations, and cemented relationships, and it was in this spirit that islanders lavished gifts on the strangers who arrived in the eighteenth century, including the amazing, baffled-looking images of gods, created of feathers, given to Cook in Hawai\u2019i on his final voyage in 1779. Sadly, such gifts failed to conquer tensions: Cook would die soon afterward in a skirmish at Kealakekua Bay. During his three voyages of \u201cdiscovery\u201d from 1768 to 1780, forty-five islanders had been killed in violent encounters, while many more died of the new, imported diseases, which continued to taint later gifts of friendship.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In 1824, the Hawai\u2019ian King Kamehameha II brought the blazing \u02bbAhu \u02bbula feather cloak to England as a gift to King George IV, hoping to strengthen diplomatic ties, but before they even met, Kamehameha and his queen, Kam\u0101malu, contracted measles and died. Disease is a theme of Lisa Reihana\u2019s hour-long video panorama, In Pursuit of Venus [Infected] (2015\u20132017) . Stretching along an entire wall, the installation reworks Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique, twenty wallpaper panels of Cook\u2019s voyages designed by the French painter Jean-Gabriel Charvet around 1804\u20131806. Using haunting sound, the video sets animation and scenes acted out by living islanders against the vivid wallpaper background, overturning any notion of benign encounters that still linger from the Romantic period of the wallpaper.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The years of colonization, entangling Oceania with the politics, commerce, and beliefs of the West, also filtered into its art: in a late-nineteenth-century Ngatu barkcloth from Tonga, the British flag joins stylized birds and traditional markings. Across the room, a Maori Madonna and child from the same period has glinting shell eyes and deeply incised tattoos. Art can cross boundaries of all kinds. Island rituals of mourning commemorated the dead while protecting the living from the lingering shades of the departed. To achieve this, the Pacific islanders created malangan, carved and painted forms that were used in ceremonies, performed sometimes years after a death, to release a soul. A fish malangan from New Ireland shown here, with glowing patterns of ochre and black, has narrow, hooded eyes and backward-curving tusks. A smaller fish swims alongside, and a tiny human figure sits in front, perched on the fish\u2019s long tongue, ready to be launched into the afterlife. Conversely, the recovery of past lives is movingly demonstrated in Fiona Pardington\u2019s The Pressure of Sunlight Falling (2010), a set of huge photographs of mid-nineteenth-century life-masks transformed by a subtle use of light so that one feels surrounded by living forms, emerging from darkness.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The far-flung archipelagos face new threats, as climate change brings rising sea-waters to encroach on their shores. The final room of this stunning exhibition returns us to the twenty-first century with John Pule\u2019s vast painting, Kehe tau hauaga foou (To all new arrivals) (2007), where clouds and vines shower down over drawings of war and gods share in the continuing conflict. \u201cOceania\u201d is a powerful demonstration of art\u2019s capacity to fight the tide of loss, honoring tradition, reclaiming places, histories, and identities, and opening the way to the future. By celebrating the unnamed artists of the past, and those who continue to make work of strength and beauty, the show carries the freight of the sea-tossed Pacific story.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: NYR Daily, Jenny Uglow, December 1, 2018 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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BRITISH MUSEUM OPENS \u2018REIMAGINING CAPTAIN COOK: PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on December 7, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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LONDON.- To mark the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook\u2019s first voyage, the British Museum opened a new exhibition which re-examines the explorer\u2019s relationship with the people of the Pacific. Reimagining Captain Cook: Pacific Perspectives looks at the ways Cook\u2019s explorations are viewed in the places he visited and by descendants of the people he encountered. Objects from the British Museum\u2019s collection associated with Cook\u2019s voyages are displayed alongside contemporary artworks made by artists from the region. Together, these works demonstrate that the impact of his voyages remains complex, contentious and largely unresolved.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The exhibition has seven sections which each focus on a place where Cook is remembered: Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, New Caledonia, Hawaii, Vanuatu and Tahiti, as well as Great Britain. Cook\u2019s experience of each place was different and these sections not only explore his encounters, but the varied memories that exist today on these islands. The contemporary works by artists from the Pacific Islands are all in some ways a response to Cook\u2019s voyages, including some which are directly responding to Cooks personal possessions which he donated to the British Museum. Together they show that Islanders are still imagining \u2013 and reimagining \u2013 encounters with Cook to this day. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The exhibition contains 88 objects and images, including 14 contemporary works. Eight of these have been specifically acquired by the Museum for this display and are exhibited here for the first time. Highlights of the contemporary works include M\u0101ori artist Steve Gibbs\u2019 Name Changer which aims to restore awareness of the traditional M\u0101ori names for the region around Gisborne New Zealand, which Captain Cook renamed \u201cPoverty Bay\u201d. Also on display is a work by the Aboriginal photographer and artist Michael Cook whose work Civilised #12 reflects on the legacy of William Dampier, the first Briton to visit Australia (before Cook), questioning what it means to be \u2018civilised\u2019. Early European misunderstandings of Aboriginal people left a legacy still being felt today.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Popular culture of the Pacific is reflected in a colourful 1970s vintage Hawaiian shirt. Acquired for this exhibition, it is the first example of the famous and ubiquitous Hawaiian shirt (known in Hawaii as an Aloha shirt) in the British Museum\u2019s collection. The shirt features images made by artists who were travelling with Cook when he arrived in Hawaii on his third and final voyage (Cook died on these islands). Some of the 18th century prints from which the images are taken are displayed alongside. The shirt reveals how deeply the legacy of Cook continues to permeate the culture of the Hawaiian Islands.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The contemporary artworks on show are now part of the Museum\u2019s collection for the nation, collected in order to challenge the traditional dialogue around Cook and offer new perspectives. One example is New Zealand M\u0101ori artist Lisa Reihana, whose work Taking Possession, Lono was recently acquired by the Museum. The work is a still image taken from Reihana\u2019s celebrated panoramic video work In Pursuit of Venus [infected]. Inspired by a 19th century French wallpaper design, which depicts colourful, fantastical scenes from Pacific Islanders\u2019 lives, Reihana inserts Europeans into the landscape in order to reimagine early encounters between Islanders and Europeans. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In this anniversary year, Reimagining Captain Cook: Pacific Perspectives highlights how the islands of the Pacific were transformed by their encounters with Cook, as well as how the islands transformed Cook himself. Two hundred and fifty years after he first set sail for the waters of the Pacific, his legacy continues to be debated, contested and challenged. The British Museum is uniquely placed to tell the story of this ever evolving relationship through the collection \u2013 and this display is a result of a major collaboration between Pacific artists, researchers, curators and British Museum staff.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Julie Adams, Curator of Oceania collections at the British Museums says: \u201cCaptain Cook represents part of a shared history between Europe and the Pacific. The stories in this exhibition, and the objects on display, present a fresh vision of Cook\u2019s voyages, one that suggests other ways of imagining this shared history. It is an exciting opportunity for us to showcase new works made by Pacific Island and Indigenous Australian artists, which demonstrate how ideas about Cook continue to change. In another 250 years I\u2019m sure we will still be encountering him\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: Artdaily.org <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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\u2018GIVE AFRICA ITS ART BACK\u2019, MACRON\u2019S REPORT SAYS<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on 7 December, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron will recommend the full restitution by French museums of works in their collections which were taken \u201cwithout consent\u201d from former African colonies.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The French historian B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Savoy and the Senegalese economist and writer Felwine Sarr will present their 108-page study to President Macron this Friday, 23 November. In it they argue that the complete transfer of property back to Africa and not the long-term loan of objects to African museums should be the general rule for works taken in the colonial period unless it can be proven that these objects were acquired \u201clegitimately\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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President Macron must now decide whether to implement the report\u2019s radical proposals in the face of strong opposition expected from his Culture Ministry and the museums themselves. The report\u2019s authors urge the president to cast aside \u201cpolitical prudence and museum anxiety\u201d and lift the sacrosanct principle of the inalienability of national collections. B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Savoy strongly denies that the new policy might lead, as museums fear, to the emptying of institutions such as the Mus\u00e9e du Quai Branly in Paris which houses 70,000 African objects. The report also aims to put strong pressure on museums throughout Europe to review their policies. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Recommendations<\/span><\/p>\n

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In November 2017, during a tour of West Africa, President Macron pledged that the \u201cpermanent or temporary\u201d return of African heritage to the continent would be a \u201cpriority\u201d during his term in office. The following March he asked Savoy and Sarr to explore the issue and propose a set of concrete actions. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the short term, the duo are proposing that 24 items or groups of objects be returned immediately to Mali, Benin, Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia and Cameroon. Most are spoils of war, taken in Abomey, S\u00e9gou or Benin City, which were pillaged by French or British troops in the 1890s. But some also come from ethnographic missions, including the famous Griaule-Leiris expedition to Africa in 1931.<\/span><\/p>\n

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This first phase of restitutions should be completed in 2019, say Savoy and Sarr. \u201cIt will be a symbolic and psychological step, in order to launch a continuing process,\u201d they told The Art Newspaper. This would be followed by a second five-year stage, \u201cundertaken on a State by State basis\u201d, and leading to a more substantial series of restitutions. The authors suggest leaving the proceedings \u201copen ended\u201d afterwards.<\/span><\/p>\n

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France would be required to deliver to each African country an inventory of all works originating from their territory under the rule of \u201ccolonial violence\u201d. Through bilateral commissions, African governments would then select the items they wish to have returned. If France objects, it would have to prove that the pieces in question were legitimately acquired.<\/span><\/p>\n

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France holds far fewer works pillaged during punitive military expeditions in Africa than Britain or Germany. But, as in the case of Nazi art looting, the report urges the return of works acquired under duress\u2014from artefacts purchased by army officers and civil servants to those collected by missionaries or ethnographic missions\u2014unless \u201cthere is evidence or information witnessing to the full consent\u201d from the owners or guardians of ritual objects. About two-thirds of the 90,000 African pieces, acquired before 1960, and now in French museums would come under scrutiny.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The report calls for a change of legislation to make it easier to remove African works from public collections. It also urges France to sign the Unidroit convention, a 1995 international treaty designed to enable restitutions from private collectors and dealers.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Placing full responsibility on inter-governmental cooperation, the report offers a striking alternative vision to projects set up by various European museums like the Benin Dialogue Group led by the British Museum in London. Generally, these initiatives propose the long-term loan of objects to Africa. But Savoy and Sarr warn that such loans could be used as a pretext to refuse the permanent transfer of property. Their report suggests that \u201ctemporary restitutions\u201d should be viewed only as a \u201ctransitory solution\u201d, allowing sufficient time for the introduction of new legislation which would enable the \u201cfinal return\u201d of art and objects to Africa. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A new way forward<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Over the past nine months Savoy and Sarr consulted a small circle of \u201ccritical friends\u201d\u2014legal experts, scholars and artists\u2014before extending their talks to about 150 people in France and in Africa. They visited Benin, Senegal, Cameroon and Mali, meeting \u201cwith everyone from students to heads of State\u201d, Savoy says. They also delved into the archives of French museums and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to draft a survey of the 90,000 objects from former colonies held in the Mus\u00e9e du Quai Branly in Paris and elsewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

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For Felwine Sarr, concerns over the conditions of preservation and display of the works once back in Africa, often cited by European museums as a justification for keeping looted works, are not a valid reason for refusing restitutions. \u201cThere are more than 500 museums on the continent, around 50 in countries like Nigeria or South Africa. Benin is building three museums and restoring another one. There is some condescension in this request for facilities on the continent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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When asked about cases where several States or museums might lay claim to the same items coming from ancient kingdoms, he said: \u201cIt will be up to the governments to solve the matter,\u201d and suggested it would then be their responsibility to transfer the pieces to traditional chieftains or royal families, but also to universities, schools, art centres or even \u201ccommunities for ritual use\u201d. Generally, the report insists on a new vision, \u201cresocialising objects of cultural heritage\u201d that have been \u201ccreolised\u201d while on display in European museums.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThere should be no conditions attached to the restitutions,\u201d argues Savoy, who stresses that \u201cwe are dealing with the case of a continent which has almost nothing left of its history when we have it all. The aim is not to empty Western museums to fill up the African ones, but to invent a new relationship based on ethics and equity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: The Art Newspaper<\/span><\/p>\n

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Vincent Noce <\/span><\/p>\n

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20th November 2018 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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MET\u2019S LEADERS MOVE AHEAD WITH MODERN AND ROCKEFELLER WINGS<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on December 7, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its wing devoted to Africa, Oceania and the Americas in 1982, the director, Philippe de Montebello, said, \u201cWe are closing the last gap in our encyclopedic coverage of the arts of man, placing works by artists from so-called \u2018primitive\u2019 regions on the level of oriental, classical, medieval and other more recognized arts of the civilized world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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His words alone \u2014 \u201cman,\u201d \u201cprimitive,\u201d \u201coriental\u201d\u2014 signify how much has changed over 36 years in thinking about objects from the cultures and peoples of places like Colombia, Peru, the Pacific Islands and Nigeria.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Now, as part of its ambitious master plan, the Met is announcing a $70 million renovation of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, which will be designed by the architect Kulapat Yantrasast of the firm wHY, to begin in late 2020 and be completed in 2023.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The project will reintroduce the collection\u2019s three distinct geographic regions in the context of \u201cthe global canon of art history,\u201d said Max Hollein, who is 100 days into his tenure as the new director.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In his first joint interview with Daniel H. Weiss, the museum\u2019s president and chief executive, Mr. Hollein also offered a window into how he will approach the Modern and contemporary art program as the museum moves forward with long-awaited plans to remodel its Southwest Wing.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Met has long needed proper galleries in which to display its storied collection of 20th and 21st century works, including Leonard A. Lauder\u2019s trove of Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures, one of the most significant gifts in the Met\u2019s history.Work on the wing was delayed in 2017 so that the museum could address a looming deficit. Now that Mr. Hollein has arrived and the museum\u2019s finances have stabilized, the Met has reactivated the project, albeit in a scaled-back form, aided by its decision in September to concentrate on the Fifth Avenue building and turn over the Met Breuer to the Frick Collection as of 2020. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Some have questioned the Met\u2019s efforts to improve its Modern and contemporary program, given that New York already has the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Guggenheim. Mr. Hollein said he will not attempt to compete with these institutions, but instead will try to make a distinctive contribution to the discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cOur goal is not to put all our energy into acquiring one $100 million painting \u2014 to go for the five highest market items,\u201d Mr. Hollein said. \u201cWe will base our presentation on quality and particular narratives and how can we present something that really adds to the understanding of Modern and contemporary art.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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While the new wing will juxtapose works from after 1900 with the museum\u2019s historic holdings, as the Breuer has, Mr. Hollein said the museum will also broaden the definition of what constitutes Modern and contemporary art, taking a global perspective from 1880 onwards.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat was happening in the 1950s in Egypt? What was happening in the \u201960s and \u201970s in Asia?\u201d Mr. Hollein said. \u201cIf you think of Modern and contemporary art not just in terms of the Western canon, that\u2019s something we want to make sure people better understand and appreciate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Met has been expanding its collection with global acquisitions from India, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico and more, according to a spokesman. One recent acquisition is a piece purchased at auction two weeks ago by the postwar Egyptian artist Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mr. Weiss said the Southwest Wing, with a revised design by David Chipperfield, was projected to cost $600 million, compared with an estimated final price tag of $800 million for the previous plan. Fund-raising is advancing \u201cto the next level,\u201d Mr. Weiss said, though he would not be more specific on timing or a possible lead gift.<\/span><\/p>\n

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This and other Met building projects, Mr. Weiss said, can move forward now that the museum is on track to balance its $320 million annual budget by 2020. The Met has increased its revenue 41 percent over last year, he explained, largely as a result of the museum\u2019s new admissions policy \u2014 which went into effect last March \u2014 requiring non-New Yorkers to each pay $25.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Also important was waiting for Mr. Hollein to arrive and to take his vision into account. \u201cIt has to be his project,\u201d Mr. Weiss said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mr. Hollein said he had discussed the decision to leave the Breuer before accepting the Met director position and agreed with the strategy. \u201cIt\u2019s clear for all of us that our energy \u2014 our focus \u2014 is on the Fifth Avenue building and getting Modern and contemporary right there,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t make sense in the long run to have a satellite. It is a logical part of the Met\u2019s overall collection.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Rockefeller Wing, a 40,000-square-foot gallery on the museum\u2019s south side, has been hampered by condensation on the glass and excessive light. In addition to addressing these problems, the renovation provides the museum with an opportunity to tell discrete stories about each region (Africa, Americas, Oceania) rather than have the sections run into one another. Mr. Weiss said about one-third of the funds for this wing have been raised so far, mostly from trustees.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In rethinking the Rockefeller Wing, for example, the Met will explore the relationship of Egypt and Rome to Africa as well as the relationship linking Europe, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Already underway is the Met\u2019s $22 million refurbishing of 10 galleries devoted to British decorative arts and sculpture, to be completed in winter 2020, and its $150 million replacement of the skylights in the European Paintings galleries, to be completed in 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But it is the Met\u2019s Southwest Wing that has been the subject of the most curiosity, given the museum\u2019s bumpy experiment with showing Modern and contemporary art at the Breuer (the building has been costly to run and the exhibitions have received mixed reviews); the failed effort by Mr. Hollein\u2019s predecessor, Thomas P. Campbell, to get initial funding for the project; and Mr. Hollein\u2019s extensive experience in contemporary art.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Under Mr. Hollein, contemporary art will not be limited to the galleries, but \u2014 \u201cin close collaboration with artists\u201d \u2014 will temporarily occupy other unused areas of the building in surprising ways, like the Great Hall at the museum\u2019s entrance and the eight empty niches on the building\u2019s facade, which for a couple of months each year will be the site of a major sculpture commission.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cIf your formula would be, the Met has to have the best of everything \u2014 it has to have one piece by every important artist \u2014 I think we will not deliver to your expectations,\u201d Mr. Hollein said. \u201cWe will give a very distinct, important, timely narrative about Modern and contemporary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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At the same time, he said, the Met will celebrate the great works in its storied collection, which in any other city would make it the major museum for Modern and contemporary art.\u201cDo you want to see Jackson Pollock\u2019s \u201cAutumn Rhythm\u201d? Do you want to see the greatest suite of Clyfford Still works and Rothko works?\u201d Mr. Hollein said. \u201cAnd I could go on \u2014 yes, yes and yes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: The new York Times by Robin Pogrebin, Nov 18, 2018 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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A NEW MUSEUM OPENS OLD WOUNDS IN GERMANY<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on October 29, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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BERLIN \u2014 One Saturday morning in February, about 100 protesters marched loudly through Berlin\u2019s streets to the Humboldt Forum, a new museum rising beside the River Spree.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Wrapped in scaffolding, the Forum, one of Europe\u2019s most ambitious current cultural projects, loomed above them as they gave speeches and held up signs that said: \u201cTell the Truth About Germany\u2019s Colonial History,\u201d \u201cClear Out the Colonial Treasury\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s Your Duty to Remember.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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One protester, Christian Kopp, bellowed into a microphone, saying that, no matter what the founders had intended, the museum would forever be associated with the blood of empire. \u201cThis,\u201d he said, pointing to the grand stone facade of the Humboldt Forum, \u201cwill be a memorial to the colonial era!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Another protester, Marianne Ball\u00e9 Moudoumbou, said, \u201cThink about the spirits of those who are still roaming here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Forum, which cost 595 million euros (almost $700 million), is being housed in a rebuilt palace, a fixture of the German and Prussian imperial past that was bombed during World War II. The prospect of objects gathered during the colonial era moving into Kaiser Wilhelm II\u2019s domain has focused further attention on the period, which the nation has never properly processed. Many of the ethnological materials that will be in the museum\u2019s impressive collection were amassed during that era, under circumstances that aren\u2019t altogether clear.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Maybe it was never going to be easy to build a major new museum in a country with such a freighted history as Germany. But the Humboldt Forum has upset a lot of people.<\/span><\/p>\n

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When it opens, there will be huge wooden boats from the South Pacific, a Buddhist temple from 5th or 6th century China and a royal throne from Bamum in western Cameroon decorated with glass beads and shells. A new museum crammed with jewels of non-Western art and culture in the center of the reunified capital seemed a good idea: It would show Germany as confident and open to the world. It would also give the country another world-class institution it could be proud of, comparable to the British Museum or the Louvre.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But as impressive as the museum itself is the vitriolic debate that has arisen. One of the Forum\u2019s three founding directors, the art historian Horst Bredekamp, described the furor as a \u201cpsychogram of Germany\u201d and said that the critical pushback is hijacking the original purpose of focusing on German scientific enlightenment and exploration.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The disagreements also provoked the resignation of a well regarded advisory board member, B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Savoy. \u201cThe baby is dead on arrival,\u201d she said in an interview, denouncing the museum as a conservative project that does not reflect a modern Germany changed by immigration and crying out for new thinking.In the era of a divided Germany, a Parliament building was erected on the same ground. It was torn down a decade ago to make way for the rebuilt palace. This irritated those Germans who thought that you couldn\u2019t rewind history, and that the architecture of their capital should be more forward looking. It saddened Easterners who were aggrieved that their story was being literally erased from the landscape.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Nearly 30 years after East and West Germany were reunited, there is a longing here for an identity that goes beyond the Holocaust and World War II, postwar division, reconstruction and reunification. As modern Germany seeks to define itself in a more complex way, the urge is surfacing to discuss past glories of scientific achievement, history, art and exploration as well as to confront an uncomfortable part of its past.<\/span><\/p>\n

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At the center of these convulsions, the Forum has pitted those who want to move on and celebrate national accomplishments against those who caution that Germany risks forgetting what it was. Germany has addressed World War II and Nazi atrocities, although these achingly difficult parts of its history may be impossible to atone for fully, but it still has not even begun re-examining its colonial era properly, critics say.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cFor too long the colonial period was a blind spot in our culture of remembrance,\u201d Monika Gr\u00fctters, Germany\u2019s federal culture minister, said in a statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

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J\u00fcrgen Zimmerer, a University of Hamburg professor and expert on African history and colonialism, said, \u201cThere is a lot more at stake than just the museum.\u201d Professor Zimmerer, who is a critic of the museum\u2019s approach, said, \u201cThe political colonial debate has become the defining debate in Germany,\u201d adding, \u201cand the Humboldt Forum is at the center of it.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

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Build it up, tear it down<\/span><\/p>\n

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The centuries-old Schloss, the original building at the heart of the debate, is seen as a link to an era of philosophers by its supporters; to its critics it symbolizes a seat of imperial power from a time of militarism and national expansionism \u2014 traits that ultimately brought down the Allied bombs on the castle in 1945.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Then there was a worry, made more sensitive by the far-right\u2019s recent inroads into German politics, that recreating the Schloss signaled a concerning nostalgia for an age when Germany was great, a view of the past that skimmed over the horrors of the 20th century. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In another sense, the project, which will be completed soon, will make the center of Berlin aesthetically whole again, Wilhelm von Boddien, who helped raise the money to rebuild it, said. As he spoke, standing beside the Forum, he gazed out at the Greek colonnades of the nearby Altes Museum and the giant cathedral where the emperors lay in their crypt. At the other end of Berlin\u2019s central boulevard, Unter den Linden, stood the Brandenburg Gate. The Forum\u2019s central place in the historic cityscape was clear.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cWhy must Berlin suffer from the Nazi times more than other German cities?\u201d Mr. von Boddien asked. \u201cWhy don\u2019t we allow Berlin to be beautiful again? We are repairing a city. And the city needs repair because it lost its heart.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The East German Communist authorities gleefully demolished the war-damaged Schloss in 1950. In its place, they constructed a stark, smoked-glass-and-steel Parliament building, the Palast der Republik, which opened in 1976.<\/span><\/p>\n

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It was a Parliament for a regime without true debate, but it also housed concert halls, theaters, an ice-cream parlor and a bowling alley. Many East Germans had fond memories of a visit there.<\/span><\/p>\n

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At a recent exhibition at the site, Iris Weissflog, 58, a bookkeeper from near Dresden, was studying an old photograph of the Palast der Republik with her 8-year-old granddaughter.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ms. Weissflog, who grew up in the former East Germany, began to weep as she recalled how she sang onstage at the Palast when she was 14 years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cI know it\u2019s good to move on, but it means leaving the past behind,\u201d Ms. Weissflog said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The idea to use the Schloss as a modern museum and a home for the non-Western art collections in Berlin finally gave the project the political momentum it needed to get built.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The collection from Berlin\u2019s Asian Art Museum and the non-European collection from the city\u2019s Ethnological Museum form one of the world\u2019s richest holdings of non-European art and artifacts. Displaced by war and the division of the city, the two museums had homes for decades in the suburb of Dahlem.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But over the past few months, these collections have begun to return to the center of the city in preparation for the forum\u2019s opening in 2019. The idea is that they are getting a prominent showcase in a beautifully redone historic building and will become accessible to many more visitors.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Forum will bring the Asian Art and Ethnological Museums together under one roof, along with exhibitions by the Berlin City Museum and Humboldt University. With so many players, the struggle to create a single new institution out of multiple power centers has led to countless headlines about dysfunction. (The S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung reported that the project was in a state of \u201cpermanent crisis.\u201d) In a city where the failure to complete a new airport has become a kind of national trauma, the Forum seemed to pose another test of the new Germany\u2019s ability to get things done.<\/span><\/p>\n

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It was one of the reasons Ms. Gr\u00fctters, the culture minister, wooed Neil MacGregor, a former director of the British Museum and one of the world\u2019s most respected arts administrators, to Berlin to be one of the Forum\u2019s three founding directors. One of his tasks was getting the parts of the museum to coordinate and present a coherent offering.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The power politics were blamed for the delay in attracting a new general director to replace the founding directors, as planned. Arguably, the biggest player is the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, a powerful official body established after the war to preserve the cultural legacy of the former Prussian state. It runs many Berlin museums, and will continue to control the extensive collections in the Forum, raising questions about what influence any director can exert.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mr. MacGregor, a sprightly man who gives the impression of unbounded energy, said he tries to look past the many obstacles the Forum has encountered. In an interview in February, he discussed his excitement about the project he described as \u201cone of the last stages of the remaking of Berlin as the capital of a new Germany.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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It is called a \u201cforum\u201d because its organizers want it to be more than a museum \u2014 a place for meeting, discussion and investigation of big global issues like immigration, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The three founding directors stepped down earlier this year, including Mr. MacGregor, who continues as chairman of a panel of outside advisers. Their successor, Hartmut Dorgerloh, was most recently manager of an organization that preserves Berlin\u2019s palaces and gardens. Some have wondered how his experience equips him to cope with the big debates unleashed in part by the Forum, but others regard him as a capable and connected administrator, an insider who will make sure it opens on time.<\/span><\/p>\n

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He faces lingering questions \u2014 about why, for example, an ethnological collection should be shoved together with Asian art, other than to provide a purpose for an expensive building. But the biggest outcry continues to be about Germany\u2019s colonial past. <\/span><\/p>\n

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The past is always present<\/span><\/p>\n

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Historically, Germany came to empire building later than other European countries like France or Britain.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But its colonial activities involved atrocities such as the genocide of Herero and Nama ethnic groups in what was then German South West Africa, and is now part of Namibia, and hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Maji Maji revolt in German East Africa, in what is now Tanzania.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Germany\u2019s colonialism was linked to what came next, according to Professor Zimmerer: Colonial officers developed ideas on racial purity, and the colonial expansion foreshadowed the Nazi push for land in Eastern Europe, for example.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Germany lost its overseas territories in the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, and so it was not swept up in the great postcolonial self reckonings of other European nations after World War II. By then, it was confronting the aftermath of its more recent history. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe public historical debate in Germany was completely absorbed by consideration of the Nazi past and of the ramifications of division,\u201d said Nicholas Thomas, director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge. \u201cThere has been much more discussion of empire in Britain, France and the Netherlands, where people in museums have thought much more about where collections have come from, and there is a deeper awareness of the sheer historical complexity.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201dMany of the objects in the Prussian heritage foundation\u2019s massive collection were gathered in a spirit of scientific inquiry as explorers brought objects back from around the globe to preserve them and learn from them, Professor Bredekamp said. But countless others, according to the critics, were seized by force, or given by people who had no choice. Human remains and sacred religious objects, which collections in Berlin contain, would hardly have been surrendered willingly, the critics point out.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cIt is undisputed that the objects reached Berlin under unequal power relations and sometimes by force,\u201d Viola K\u00f6nig, a former director of the Ethnological Museum, wrote in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Among the most prominent objects in the Prussian Foundation\u2019s ethnological collection are several hundred sculptures, Benin bronzes (actually made of brass), created in an ancient kingdom that is now part of Nigeria and borders on the modern nation of Benin. They were purchased on the open market but only after they had been looted by British troops.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mnyaka Sururu Mboro, a civil engineer, teacher and anticolonial activist in Berlin, wants the skulls of ancestors he says were executed by Germans in Tanzania returned to Africa.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In an interview, he said the collection contains thousands of disputed objects from Africa alone. \u201cThe shelves are totally full,\u201d he said. \u201cThe people there are still in sorrow,\u201d he added. \u201cThey have not buried their own people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Amid the backlash against the Forum, the biggest blow came last summer when Professor Savoy, an art historian, resigned from its advisory panel, announcing that she wanted to know \u201chow much blood is dripping from a work of art\u201d and comparing the museum to Chernobyl for the tendency of its leadership to erect a roof over its problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Humboldt Forum had the potential to be a great intellectual spectacle that posed new questions, she said in an interview in her Berlin office. But, she added, the Forum is a deeply conservative project and its leadership represents an older generation that was incapable of addressing its problems. She criticized the museum establishment for dismissing the voices of anticolonial critics. \u201cThe museum has a light side and a dark side,\u201d she said. \u201cThey want to show only the nice side. They want to keep it hidden. That is not healthy for a society.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Professor Savoy has since become an adviser to President Emmanuel Macron of France, whose own steps at addressing his country\u2019s colonial period have put Germany\u2019s in the shade, according to many experts, and inflamed the European debate.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Signaling the shift during a visit to Burkina Faso last November, President Macron announced he wanted France to work rapidly toward the temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage to Africa. \u201cAfrican heritage,\u201d he said, \u201ccannot be a prisoner of European museums.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The colonial debate that has at times seemed to overwhelm the Forum has prompted some action. There are plans to introduce new expert curatorial voices from countries where the objects originated, to get away from the idea that it presents a purely German take on the world. A specialist from Tanzania, for example, will be co-curator of an exhibition about that country.<\/span><\/p>\n

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There are plans for other joint ventures with Namibia, though critics wonder what influence outside experts will really have. Where there has been a claim for restitution, this will be noted on an object being displayed, Mr. Dorgerloh said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Since the debate intensified, Ms. Gr\u00fctters has encouraged a greater focus on colonialism. The German Lost Art Foundation, which traditionally investigates Nazi-looted art, announced it would widen its remit and give grants to museums for colonial provenance research.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The heritage foundation and its president, Hermann Parzinger, agree that the provenance of objects in the forum\u2019s collections needs to be more fully researched, and some things should eventually be returned.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But he proposes a gradualist approach that requires first a broader European rethinking of the principles of restitution. \u201cIt makes sense to give some things back,\u201d Professor Parzinger said in an interview. \u201cBut we should not say everything has to go back.\u201d He added, \u201cWe have to see if we collected them in a legal way. History,\u201d he said \u201cis not just black or white. There are also gray areas.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The heritage foundation returned nine artifacts it said had been taken from graves of indigenous communities in Alaska in the 1890s, and in August, several skulls and other human remains were given back to representatives from Namibia.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Professor Savoy said in August that the new willingness to admit even just the need for provenance research and consider restitution is important progress. Germany may now be starting to catch up with other countries, experts say. The gradual approach, however, does not satisfy those who demand a greater admission of culpability in colonial crimes, a fuller inventory of colonial era artifacts and a more rapid return of objects.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The right-wing party Alternative for Germany has also finally entered the debate, asking questions in the German Parliament about the cost of provenance research, raising fears among the Forum\u2019s critics that the party could hinder the return of objects.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Those on the anticolonial side continue to regard the forum as reflecting an affliction of Germany\u2019s history. In February, the angry protesters marched from what they consider one historical sore to another \u2014 from the site of the 1880s conference convened by Otto von Bismarck to coordinate claims on central Africa to the grassy space in front of the forum.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Their anger was palpable, but nevertheless many here welcome the debate that encompasses the Forum.\u201cWithout the Humboldt Forum\u201d said Friedrich von Bose, a curator in the new museum beside the Spree, \u201cthe debate would not be\u201d where it is today.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source : New York Times Oct,14 2018 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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HEARD MUSEUM EXHIBITS RARE WORKS BY HENRI MATISSE AND THE NATIVE ALASKAN MASKS THAT INSPIRED HIM<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on October 29, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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PHOENIX, AZ.- The Heard Museum, located in Phoenix, Ariz., announced the opening of Yua: Henri Matisse and the Inner Arctic Spirit, on Oct. 29, 2018. This will be the public\u2019s first and only opportunity to see this groundbreaking exhibition exploring the surprising artistic and spiritual connection between the great 20th century French modern master, Henri Matisse, and the Indigenous people of the Arctic.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Matisse is celebrated for his sensuous approach to color and composition. Largely unknown to the general public, however, are his striking black-and-white portraits of Inuit people that were inspired, in part, by a group of Yup\u2019ik (Native Alaskan) masks collected by his son-in-law Georges Duthuit.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In the last decade of his life, while working on his masterpiece La Chapelle de Vence, Matisse became interested in both the physical forms and spiritual concerns of the Inuit which later inspired this series of 39 individual portraits depicting the faces of Inuit men and women. In addition to original works by Matisse, the exhibition will also feature Yup\u2019ik masks, cultural objects, archival photographs, film and ephemera totaling more than 150 pieces.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Heard Museum is honored to show these rarely seen works by Matisse and to share this extraordinary story with our visitors,\u201d said David M. Roche, Heard Museum director and CEO. \u201cOf particular significance to us is the effort this story inspired to reunite pairs of Yup\u2019ik masks that, due to a variety of circumstances, have been separated by time and great distances. It\u2019s a thrilling and emotional experience to see them together again and advancing this type of scholarship is central to our mission.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201dYua: Henri Matisse and the Inner Arctic Spirit is co-curated by Sean Mooney, curator of the Rock Foundation and Chuna McIntyre, a Yup\u2019ik artist and elder, and is the first ever exhibition to restore the original cultural practice of mated pairs of Yup\u2019ik masks.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s a privilege for us to show our masks,\u201d said Chuna McIntyre. \u201cAll of these masks were once used together in a ceremony, then dispersed all over the world. People will experience centuries of history and it is a rare opportunity to finally have them all together again thanks to the Heard Museum.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Yua is a Yup\u2019ik word that represents the spiritual interconnectedness of all living things and is essential to maintaining balance and order in the Arctic way of life. The Yup\u2019ik are Native Alaskans and their name translates to \u201cthe Real People.\u201d A critical objective of the exhibit is to underscore the important contributions of Native Alaskans to an expanding concept of American art, as well as its intersection with broader artistic movements.<\/span><\/p>\n

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National and International exhibition collaborators include the Matisse Museum (Le Cateau) in France, the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Fowler Museum of Cultural History at UCLA, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC-Berkeley and the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Major funding for the exhibit has been provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Educational programs are being designed to ensure many points of entry for families, educators and youth and includes the unveiling of the exhibition mascot, Henri the Husky. Animals play an important role in Arctic cultures and Henri the Husky will be the accessible \u201cface\u201d to help families, youth and students engage and learn about the art and themes in the exhibition. Henri will be incorporated into all collateral materials including a Matisse Family Guide as well as the companion family exhibition It\u2019s Your Turn: Matisse in the Sandra Day O\u2019Connor Gallery and public events including First Fridays and Holidays at the Heard. An original ink drawing by Matisse depicting his beloved dog Raudi will be shown in It\u2019s Your Turn: Matisse and hung at eye-level for kids to enjoy.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: Artdaily.org <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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U-M EXHIBITION CHALLENGES TRADITIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF AFRICAN ARTS AND CULTURES<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on August 12, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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ANN ARBOR, MICH.- More than ever in the age of globalization, ideas fluidly cross geographic, generational, and cultural boundaries.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cBeyond Borders: Global Africa,\u201d an exhibition that will open at the University of Michigan Museum of Art this month, seizes this moment by repositioning Africa and its artists at the center of complex cross-cultural exchange for centuries.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Bringing together paintings, photographs, sculpture and installations created in Africa, Europe and the United States from the 19th to the 21st centuries, the exhibition features approximately 40 works of art drawn from UMMA\u2019s African art collection and from private and public holdings around the world, including the eminent Contemporary African Art Collection assembled by Jean Pigozzi of Geneva, Switzerland.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The exhibition explores issues such as slavery, colonization, migration, racism and identity through works by Kudzanai Chiurai, Omar Victor Diop, Seydou Ke\u00efta, Houston Maludi, Nandipha Mntambo, Fabrice Monteiro, Wangechi Mutu, Sam Nhlengethwa, Serge Alain Nitegeka, Alison Saar, Ch\u00e9ri Samba, Kehinde Wiley, and a host of unrecorded artists. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cBeyond Borders presents UMMA\u2019s distinguished collection of historical and contemporary African art, along with outstanding international loans, to ask questions about what it means to be an \u2018African\u2019 artist and make \u2018African\u2019 art,\u201d said UMMA Director Christina Olsen. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Works on view include a video of the South African artist Nandipha Mntambo as a combined bullfighter and bull; Senegalese artist Omar Victor Diop\u2019s photograph re-enacting the 18th-century portrait of abolitionist Jean-Baptiste Belley by French artist Anne-Louis Girodet; Kehinde Wiley\u2019s \u201cOn Top of the World\u201d (2008), a large-scale portrait by the renowned African-American artist that conflates Nigerian independence and the Black Power movement in the U.S.; and a Nkisi power figure by a Vili artist from the late 19th century.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cBeyond Borders: Global Africa\u201d will be on view at the U-M Museum of Art from Aug. 11 to Nov. 25, 2018, and is curated by Laura De Becker, UMMA\u2019s Helmut and Candis Stern Associate Curator of African Art.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe works in the exhibition demonstrate how conceptual and geographic borders continue to inform\u2014and limit\u2014the way we collect, research and display the arts of Africa,\u201d De Becker said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated book published by UMMA, with an essay by De Becker, and a range of related public programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: Artdaily.org <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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INDIGENOUS ART COMES FIRST IN ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO\u2019S NEW CANADIAN GALLERIES<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on July 4, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Museum has made more space for First Nations and Inuit artists and labels are now written in indigenous languages<\/span><\/p>\n

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Canada Day, 1 July, ushers in a new era for the presentation of Modern and contemporary Canadian art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto. The 13,000 sq ft J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous and Canadian Art\u2014which added the \u201cIndigenous\u201d to its name last year when the museum established a Department of Canadian and Indigenous Art\u2014is due to open reimagined galleries that give primacy to First Nations and Inuit art for the first time.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In each McLean gallery, \u201ccontemporary indigenous art starts the conversation with Canadian art\u201d, says Wanda Nanibush, who became the AGO\u2019s first curator of indigenous art in 2016. Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik, the AGO\u2019s curator of Canadian art, have designed the centre\u2019s display of 75 works around six themes: origins, self, land, water, transformations and \u201cindigenous2indigenous\u201d. They avoided a chronological installation that would have moved through the decades and styles of Canadian art, on the grounds that \u201cCanadian art [would decide] where indigenous art fits in\u201d, Nanibush says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t allow for indigenous art to speak on its own terms.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Works by Canadian artists such as Emily Carr and Florence Carlyle are hung in dialogue with works by indigenous artists including Carl Beam and Rebecca Belmore; the latter is due to have her largest ever solo show at the museum this summer (12 July-21 October). For instance, in the \u201cself\u201d gallery, Belmore\u2019s Rising to the Occasion (1987-91), a dress that the Anishinaabe-kwe artist wore in a performance responding to a royal visit to Ontario, is paired with Joanne Tod\u2019s painting Chapeau Entaill\u00e9 (1989) of a woman in a similar dress.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe centre has increased the number of gallery spaces dedicated to Inuit art from one to three, and contemporary indigenous art fills a large new gallery of its own.\u201d Labels in the McLean Centre are now written in indigenous languages (either the local Anishinaabemowin language or Inuktitut), as well as English and French.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Canadian art in the AGO\u2019s Thomson Collection galleries, meanwhile, is presented chronologically. \u201cIn any healthy, successful museum, you have to allow for multiple narratives,\u201d says the museum\u2019s director, Stephan Jost.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Judith H. Dobrzynski<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: The Artnewspaper, 29th June <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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BERLIN\u2019S ETHNOLOGICAL MUSEUM RETURNS GRAVE-PLUNDERED ARTEFACTS TO ALASKA<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on May 18, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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BERLIN (AFP).- Germany has restituted nine artefacts belonging to indigenous people in Alaska after determining they were plundered from graves.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees museums in the German capital, said Wednesday the burial objects were brought to Berlin in 1882-1884 on commission by the then Royal Museum of Ethnology.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But \u201ceverything shows today that the objects stemmed from a grave robbery and not from an approved archaeological dig,\u201d said the foundation.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The objects, including two broken masks, a cradle and a wooden idol, were handed over to a representative of the Alaska Chugach people.\u201c<\/span><\/p>\n

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The objects were taken from the graves then without the consent of the indigenous people and were therefore removed unlawfully,\u201d said Foundation President Hermann Parzinger. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAs such, they don\u2019t belong in our museums,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Chugach region of southwestern Alaska has been inhabited for thousands of years by the Sugpiaq people, also known as the Alutiiq.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Museums in Europe have been under pressure to return artefacts that had been acquired unlawfully or unethically.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Provenance research in Germany has largely focused on art and artefacts plundered from the Jews during Adolf Hitler\u2019s Nazi rule.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But the Prussian foundation has also begun looking into the origins of human remains, including 1,000 skulls mostly from Rwanda, brought to Europe during the colonial era for racial \u201cscientific\u201d research.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: Artdaily.org<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Agence France-Presse <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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HAMBURG MUSEUM SAYS ITS BENIN BRONZES COULD RETURN TO NIGERIA\u2014BUT NOT YET<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted on May 14, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Hamburg Museum f\u00fcr Kunst und Gewerbe (MKG) is confronting the uncomfortable history of three bronzes in its collection, which it says were unquestionably looted from the Kingdom of Benin, now part of Nigeria, by British troops in 1897.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Since February, the objects have been the focus of an exhibition entitled Looted Art?, part of an ongoing series at the museum. They will then be passed on to Hamburg\u2019s ethnological museum, which holds other Benin artefacts, to \u201cprovide the necessary framework for further research into the origin of the bronzes as well as transnational communication with Nigeria and the royal dynasty\u201d, according to a statement from the MKG. The applied arts institution says it is unable to provide the appropriate context for their permanent display.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Around 50 such bronzes are believed to have passed through the hands of Justus Brinckmann, the MKG\u2019s founding director. He \u201cwas among the first to recognise the artistic value and precision of these items\u201d, the statement says, adding that he profited from Hamburg\u2019s port and its links to trading companies based in Africa. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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There are no immediate plans to return the sculptures to Nigeria, says Sabine Schulze, the museum\u2019s director. \u201cHamburg could take a pioneering role and return the first bronzes to their country of origin. That would be a signal!\u201d she wrote in the exhibition catalogue. She said, though, that \u201cwe cannot decide alone over the future of these objects\u2014not in the MKG, not in Hamburg\u201d. Their fate requires \u201ctransnational discussions and models of conduct\u201d and \u201cjoint decisions\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Led by the African art expert Barbara Plankensteiner, the ethnological museum is, however, a member of the Benin Dialogue Group of European museums. Formed in 2007, it is planning a permanent display in Benin City of works looted by the British, on rotating loan. An estimated 4,000 bronze and ivory artefacts were plundered in total.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The MKG began systematically researching the provenance of its collection in 2010 with funding from the Magdeburg-based German Lost Art Foundation. It regularly presents its findings through the Looted Art? displays. In 2016, it held a symposium on silver looted from Jewish collections by the Nazis. The museum holds around 3,000 seized silver objects. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Catherine Hickley<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: The Art Newspaper, 11th May 2018 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ER ZIJN OOK ZORGEN OM RESTITUTIE AFRIKAANSE KUNST Geplaatst op 14 december 2018 Frankrijk en koloniale roofkunst President Macron wil 26 door het Franse leger geroofde werken teruggeven aan Benin na een kritisch rapport over erfgoed. Europese musea en handelaren zijn bezorgd. De troon van koning Gu\u00e9zo (1818-1858), de deuren van het paleis van B\u00e9hanzin of de \u2018antropomorfe\u2019 beelden (half dier, half mens) van de vorsten van Dahomey: ze staan nu nog op prominente plekken in het Mus\u00e9e du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Parijs. Maar niet voor lang meer \u2013 26 door het Franse leger buitgemaakte werken, moeten \u201ezonder dralen\u201d\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"blocksy_meta":{"page_title_panel":"","has_hero_section":"disabled","753bfe3db32116e260c11483ef164e65":"","hero_section":"type-1","hero_elements":[{"id":"custom_title","enabled":true,"heading_tag":"h1","title":"Home"},{"id":"custom_description","enabled":true,"description_visibility":{"desktop":true,"tablet":true,"mobile":false}},{"id":"custom_meta","enabled":false,"meta_elements":[{"id":"author","enabled":true,"label":"By","has_author_avatar":"yes","avatar_size":25},{"id":"post_date","enabled":true,"label":"On","date_format_source":"default","date_format":"M j, 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