African Art reinstallation. (recent exhibitions).

University of Iowa Museum of Art Iowa City, Iowa 

A curator reinstalling a museum's permanent collection must consider two questions: first, how to impress regular visitors with a new display of familiar material, and second, how to wow first-timers. The exhibition in the new and expanded galleries of African art at the University of Iowa Museum of Art must have achieved both goals, thanks to the beautiful work by the museum's curator of African art, Victoria Rovine.

The museum has for years maintained a reputation for housing one of the best university collections in the country as well as for being a major stop for African-art enthusiasts. Clearly the new installation proposes to visitors that they see even familiar objects in new ways. Not only are visitors provided information based on new research, but they are also forced by the new installation contexts to con duct their own individual inquiries into the formal and conceptual aspects of the objects.

At the entrance to the main gallery, one is confronted by two elegant pairs of sculptures: Yoruba Elefon masks from the workshop of Agbonbiofe and male and female Igbo figures, possibly from the Awka area. The wall-text description of the latter as "display figures" is questionable, since they are primarily tutelary deities to which devotees made regular votary offerings. A visitor familiar with Igbo sculpture, I suspect, might confuse these, as labeled, with the Ugonachomma display figures also from the north central Igbo area. In spite of the labeling problems, the juxtaposition of the Yoruba and Igbo sculptures seems to beg for a review or recollection of Simon Ottenberg's comparative analysis of Igbo and Yoruba art published in African Arts ("Igbo and Yoruba Art Contrasted," Feb. 1983).

Generally the installation avoids organizing works by cultural group, although the Benin and Yoruba materials get a separate space, perhaps in recognition of their popularity in the African visual-arts canon. The rest of the installation follows a thematic ordering, which itself has its strengths and weaknesses.

Let's consider the strengths. When objects from diverse traditions and cultural groups are brought together within a specific thematic space, viewers are made to contemplate commonalities and differences between the works and, by extension, their cultural milieus. It also nudges them into seeking broad critical outlines. For instance, the platform for "Status and Identity," which encompasses a Dan ladle, Luba bow stand and goblet, Ogboni insignia, and a Mangbetu throwing knife, suggests how different material objects from different cultures mediate between complex processes of social stratification, ethnic affiliation, and personal relationships. Or take the "Masks and Transformation" panel at the back of the south gallery. This presentation points to the use of masks in the transformative ritual process. Yet one also thinks about form, shape, and design, qualities made evident by the subtle formal analogies and contrasts suggested by the curator. After all, the mask in African art is both idea and form. Contemplating the various functions of the twenty-three masks arranged in two vertical rows on three panels, one also appreciates the incredible variety of ways artists have articulated form, used color, or worked surfaces. In other words, the reference to transformation in the panel title is not just to the obvious process suggested by the wall text but also to the dazzling range of formal possibilities proposed by African sculptors, especially for the human face.

Then there is the problem with the kind of thematic arrangements the Iowa installation offers. How easy might it be for a museum visitor to think across themes, as the installation intends, when, for instance, masks occur not only in "Masks and Transformation" but also in "Imagining the Other World," "Exploring Form," and "Carving Perfection." Could not any of these themes be mutually interchangeable vis-a-vis the groups of objects? One could conceivably contemplate the "Masks and Transformation" panel under the subject of "Exploring Form" or "Carving Perfection." Perhaps the problem here is inherent in the epistemology of classifications and ordering, and therefore not necessarily specific to the installation. While there is no easy way out, the question must always be raised in order to force both curators and viewers to think constantly about knowledge and how its transference is staged or enacted, particularly in a museum context.

The exquisite installation of the main gallery owes much to the way the space is organized. The thematic groupings are either placed on the gallery's main walls or on five oval platforms built of unpainted, beautifully grained off-ochre wood, which contrasts nicely with the gallery's white walls. Obtrusive pedestals are kept to a minimum. The platforms in a sense domesticate the museum space, as they recall trendy home furniture, something you might find in the living room of a collector. The pastel-blue background wall for the objects grouped under "Imagining the Other World" creates a dramatic effect. Alluding to the sea, the blue works well as a space for objects associated with the afterlife, including several white-faced spirit masks and an exquisite carved and painted figure of Mami Wata, the seductive sea-dweller.

The ordering of the smaller Stanley I and Stanley II galleries is more straightforward, the former dealing mostly with household furniture, and the latter, utilitarian objects--drums, knives and swords, shields. But the display in Stanley II is "traditional" in its conception, perhaps because there wasn't much space to work with: the airiness of the main gallery is reduced progressively through Stanley I to the "passageway" area of Stanley II. Of course, a curator never gets all the space needed to display the objects in a collection; the observation here points more to an institutional problem than failure on the curator's part. Indeed, Rovine's solution to this limitation is astute: the Open Storage gallery. This room reminds one of the late-nineteenth-century display cases in the Pitt Rivers or Homiman Museum, except that Iowa's objects with their ID tags are much more tastefully arranged and wonderfully lit. Displaying objects from their storerooms without the explanatory labels that are now de rigueur in museum display makes evident the "progress" made in exhibition techniques. We see what amounts to a historicization of museum display. From the Open Storage through the Stanley II and I galleries to the main gallery, it feels like as though one is passing through time.

A word on the intriguing pottery piece in a corner of the main gallery. This colorful glazed work, made in 2000 by the Malian ceramist Baba Wague Diakate and displayed beside a thirteenth-century bottle from Djenne, Mall, is both a bold gesture and an indicator of a lingering problem in African-art museum practice. It is arguably the only piece by a modern or contemporary African artist in the entire collection, and its presence in the display is reminiscent of the usual one or two paragraphs grudgingly conceded to contemporary work in publications on African art. Though a tentative gesture, Rovine's inclusion of the ceramic piece seems subtly to suggest that museums with African art must not remain repositories for objects from "extinct" societies.

CHIKA OKEKE, an artist and independent curator, is a doctoral candidate in art history at Emory University.