African art
A LACMA exhibition of modern pieces is the start of a long-term program.
WHEN museums display African art and Modern art together, they generally do so to illustrate how seeing Africa's arresting masks and fantastic figures helped Picasso and other Modern artists escape the constraints of Realism and move into Cubism, Surrealism and Dadaism.
But in a new gallery at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, African art is framed as a contemporary art form in its own right, not just an aesthetic enabler for a century of Modern artists. "Tradition as Innovation in African Art," curated by Polly Nooter Roberts, an African art expert at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, is the debut of a partnership between the museums that will display African works in a prominent space at the plaza entrance to the Ahmanson Building's Modern art collection.
The gallery, in full view of a monumental black geometric Tony Smith sculpture, will hold African art exhibitions that will be rotated annually, said LACMA Deputy Director Nancy Thomas, in a dynamic rearrangement that pushes the mostly 19th and 20th century African pieces to center stage.
"This is the start of a long-term permanent program for African art at LACMA, and part of our goal is to reposition African art within the context of a general art museum," Thomas said. Previously, LACMA displayed a small African selection in a less prominent Ahmanson gallery near ancient art of the Americas.
"People think of [African artists] as being ancient inspiration, when in fact they're contemporaries," said LACMA Director Michael Govan. Their work is "not just inspiration for an avant-garde. It's alive. You look at these pieces and say: Does Modern art get any better?"
Roberts, the deputy director and chief curator at the Fowler, who selected the works in the show, seeks to present African art in its own context. The Janus-faced forest guardian figure from the Niger Delta that towers over the gallery entrance with a sword in his hand and a simian on his head was created to protect villagers from perils that lurk in the forest, the exhibition explains.
The Ijo wood piece is among works drawn from Southern California private collections. Several pieces are from LACMA's relatively small collection, but nearly half the compact display was borrowed from the extensive African collection at the Fowler. The museum also lent Roberts, who first experienced Africa as a diplomat's daughter in Liberia and Tanzania and has worked in such places as Senegal, Ivory Coast and Congo.
