Anthropos: Anthropos, 92.1997,1/3

Anthropos, 92.1997,1/3

Bibliographische Daten

Zeitschrift

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschrift

Werks-URN (URL):: https://digi.evifa.de/viewer/resolver?urn=urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-714820

URN:: urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-714820

Persistenter Identifier:: BV043334262

Titel:: Anthropos

Erscheinungsort:: Fribourg

Verlag:: Ed. St. Paul

Erscheinungsjahr:: 1906

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Wissensgebiet:: Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie > Allgemeines

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Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenband

Werks-URN (URL):: https://digi.evifa.de/viewer/resolver?urn=urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-711886

URN:: urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-711886

Persistenter Identifier:: 1513768301723

Titel:: Anthropos, 92.1997,1/3

Erscheinungsjahr:: 1997

Signatur:: LA 1118

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Zeitschriftenheft

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenheft

Titel:: Bd. 92, 1997, Heft 1-3

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Zeitschriftenartikel

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenartikel

Titel:: Promoting African Art. The Catalogue to the Exhibit of African Art at the Royal Academy of Arts, London

Sonstige Person:: Beidelman, T. O.

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Anthropos 92.1997: 3-20 Promoting African Art The Catalogue to the Exhibit of African Art at the Royal Academy of Arts, London T. O. Beidelman Abstract. - The large exhibition of African art shown re cently in London, Berlin, and New York provides rich data for reassessing current values and aims in presenting African artefacts to the public. Issues of regional and ethnic bias, questions of authenticity, hostility to modernism, definition of what is art, contestation over ownership of cultural properties, and commercial opportunism all figure in many such public exhibitions. This essay examines some of these problems using this prominent exhibit to illustrate these points. [African art, regional bias, authenticity, aesthetics.] T. O. Beidelman, D. Phil. (University of Oxford), Prof, of anthropology at New York University. - Research in east African ethnography (Kaguru, Ngulu, Baraguyu, Nuer); study of colonialism in Africa, religion, social organization, history of social anthropology. His publications include: The Kaguru (New York 1971), W. Robertson Smith and the Sociologi cal Study of Religion (Chicago 1974), Colonial Evangelism (Bloomington 1982), Moral Imagination in Kaguru Modes of Thought (Bloomington 1986), The Cool Knife (in press), and over one hundred scholarly articles. As part of the Africa 95 Festival, the Royal Acade my in London exhibited an immense accumulation of art from Africa, over eight hundred pieces. This was shown from 4 October 1995 until 21 January 1996. It then moved to Berlin where it was shown from 1 March until 1 May 1996 through the Zeitgeist-Gesellschaft at the Martin Gropius Bau. As I began this essay it was scheduled for the Guggenheim Museum in New York City from June 7 until September 29, 1996. I have since seen the exhibit (three times) which I found impressive in terms of its range and the quality of many pieces but ill-displayed, poorly labelled, and uneven in quality and actual coverage. The exhibit’s composition varies at each site, but the catalogue 1 (sold at all three exhibition galleries) remains constant, reflecting what the exhibit would have been like had political and other factors not intervened. This volume, lavishly illustrated with over eight hundred excellent colour photographs, maps, and copious annotations, is so vast and varied that I can here only indicate its form and scope and comment briefly. I do this in the opening of this essay. In the remainder I consider the ideology behind this catalogue. The show prompting the catalogue is at a world famous exhibition site. The vast range of artefacts illus trated and the scholars providing the commentary in the catalogue make this a likely milestone in assessing the place which the visual arts of Africa hold for the international community of art. Fur thermore, exhibition catalogues have increasingly grown in size and scholarly apparatus so today catalogues such as this have a permanent impact and circulation which make them in many ways as important as the exhibitions they illustrate (Sieber 1996: 68). The key word in the title of my essay is “pro moting.” I selected this term because of its multi ple and somewhat ambivalent meanings. “Promot ing” can mean the act of popularizing or selling a product or idea to a wider public. It can also mean the advancing of some idea, product, or person to a higher level of appreciation or value. The word combines an ambiguous, ambivalent sense involving both moral and material rewards. As with all major exhibits of art, the aesthetic, moral, intellectual, and scholarly are often combined with the political, propagandistic, and commercial. It is with some of these broader factors that much of my essay is concerned. I begin with a description of the way the cat alogue has been organized. It is repeatedly stated in the catalogue’s text that in large part, the cata logue’s arrangement reflects how the London ex hibit itself was arranged for viewing. While this es say is a review of the catalogue, very brief mention of its relation to the actual exhibits consequently seems necessary. Museum size and structure relate to any exhibit. The conventional structure and large size of the Royal Academy present space radically different from the Guggenheim Museum 1 Phillips, Tom (ed.): Africa. The Art of a Continent. Munich: Prestel, 1995. 613 pp. ISBN 3-7913-1603-6. Price: $ 85.00. A German translation, “Afrika, die Kunst eines Kontinents” (1996), is published by the same press.

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