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Representing Africa in American Art Museums

Ravenhill ARTICLE

African Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 1923-2016: (courtesy of the BMA Archives)

exhibition titles in bold were accompanied by publications

  • African Negro Art (February 10 – March 9, 1936)
  • African Art (November 1 – 24, 1946)
  • African Art (January 1947) | Branch Museum 
  • Wurtzburger Collection of African Negro Sculpture (January 12 – March 7, 1954)
  • Senufo Sculpture from West Africa (September 17 – October 27, 1963)
  • Spirit of African Art (November 22, 1966 – January 15, 1967)
  • Art of the Congo (February 6 – March 31, 1968)
  • Art of Liberia (November 5, 1968 – January 5, 1969)
  • Contemporary African Art: A Revitalized Continuation of Tradition (March 18, 1973 - ?) | Sales & Rental Gallery
  • Monumentality of Miniature African Sculpture (March 27 – May 13, 1973)
  • Face for a Spirit: Ritual Masks of Black Africa (1974 – 1975) | Travelling exhibition 
  • Social Rite and Personal Delight: African Art from Baltimore Collections (June 17 – August 3, 1975)
  • Traditions: African Carvings and Decorative Arts (February 6, 1977 - ?) | Sales and Rental Gallery
  • Beyond Decoration: Signs and Symbols in African Art (February 1 – March 26, 1984)
  • Expressions of Cameroon Art: The Franklin Collection (May 31 – August 23, 1987)
  • Ndebele Beadwork (October 2, 1990 – January 13, 1991)
  • Gold of Africa: Jewelry and Ornaments from Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, and Senegal (September 24 – November 10, 1991)
  • Benin: Royal Art of Africa from the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Vienna (September 7 – October 30, 1994)
  • Ancient Nubia: Egypt's Rival in Africa (January 31 – April 14, 1996)
  • Art of the Baga: A Drama of Cultural Reinvention (January 29 – April 13, 1997)
  • Chowke!: Art and Initiation Among Chokwe and Related Peoples (June 13 – September 5, 1999)
  • Meditations on African Art: Light (December 17, 2006 – April 1, 2007)
  • Meditations on African Art: Color (April 18 – August 19, 2007)
  • Meditations on African Art: Pattern (March 12 – August 17, 2008)
  • Hand Held: Personal Arts from Africa (September 25, 2011- February 5, 2012)
  • Front Room: Zwelethu Mthethwa (November 18, 2012 – February 10, 2013)
  • Diverging Streams: Eastern Nigerian Art (April 26, 2015 – April 17, 2016)
  • Design for Mobile Living: Art from Eastern Africa (June 1 – November 27, 2016)
  • Shifting Views: People & Politics in Contemporary African Art (December 18, 2016 – June 18, 2017)

Select Catalogs in the JHU libraries:

What are our present notions of gender in the United States and how has feminist art history operated within those notions, challenged them or contributed to them? What are some of the problems of existing approaches that need complicating? How do multiple and intertwining identities - cultural background, race, class, family, age, sexual orientation etc.. help to shape women’s artistic production, the representation of women, and their engagement with cultural objects at different time periods and in different places? Why should these questions matter to the museum? 

  • Oyèrónké Oyewùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. ix-xvii; 11-17

  • Ruth B. Phillips, “Masking in Mende Sande Society Initiation Rituals,” Africa: Journal of the International  African Institute 48.3 (1978): 265-277.

  • Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg,” in Renaissance Quarterly 39.3 (1986): 414-437

 

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