Forms of Wonderment: the History and Collections of the Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal.

Forms of Wonderment The History and Collections of the Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal Edited by Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers and Ineke Eisenburger

Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal, 2002. 2 vols. 614 pp., 734 color & 62 b/w photos, 9 maps. EUR 100 hardcover, slipcase.

Museums (or perhaps curators?) are showing signs of restlessness with the public's limited expectations for the collection catalogue, long conceptualized as a photo album of "masterpieces" with notes on provenance and function. In contrast, Pamela McClusky, in Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back (2002), presents the African collection at the Seattle Art Museum through a series of personalized case histories that fold reception into the biographies of the object. In See the Music, Hear the Dance: Rethinking African Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Frederick Lamp considers the museum object as a "fragment" and attempts to "reconstruct the original artistic context," giving special consideration to performance. (1) Now the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal, The Netherlands, has issued a deluxe, large format, two-volume set, which is designed "not ... to be a catalogue" (p. 7), though it illustrates more than 850 objects in its collection.

Eschewing a focus on "hidden treasures," the text interweaves six chapters on "key museum collections" with articles on a variety of theoretical and practical museum topics. The design is complex. Each volume opens and closes with a teaser of historical photographs from the museum's archive. The learned museological and collection essays are punctuated by visual "interludes" devoted to the arts of tobacco, gold, metal, weapons, beadwork, headgear, amulets, staffs, and musical instruments. Four of these sections include a single fold out sheet. Pulling out one of these sheets (27" wide) is like opening one of the drawers in the cabinets on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford): the sheer variety of forms is captivating. Architectural historian Vincent Scully used to say that "art is what we treat as art." In this case, photographing pipes or beads or amulets at near or actual full size creates an aura around the objects that forces serious appraisal.

The second half of each volume illustrates a generous selection of objects from the collection. Volume 1 is dedicated to West Africa (including Cameroon); volume 2, to Central, East, and Southern Africa. Clearly, this rich publication is intended to transform the institution's image as a small feisty museum, "the little engine that could," into that of a major player in the representation of Africa in Europe.

The Afrika Museum began in 1954 as a mission museum sponsored by the Roman Catholic Congregation of the Holy Spirit (known as Spiritans). Although it still maintains warm relations with the congregation, it has evolved into an independent institution that receives significant subsidies from the Dutch state. Early in its career, the museum opened an "African village" with buildings taken over from the 1958 Brussels World Fair (p. 12). This feature proved so popular that the institution built three new African "villages" and opened an official "Outdoor Museum" in 1987. Among the public, the Afrika Museum is unquestionably now best known for such irresistible sights as a Beninois stilt village or Dogon hamlet nestled into verdant Dutch parkland. Among Central Africanists, the museum was also a famed repository for a world-class collection from Angola, both Congos, and Cabinda. This publication makes clear that the Afrika Museum also sponsors a serious conservation program, an almost untouched photographic archive, and a collection of surprising breadth and depth, including works of contemporary artists of Africa and its Diaspora.

Among the collection essays, Hans Witte and Anja Veirman give magisterial overviews of the arts and conceptual universe of the Yoruba and Senufo. Both essays are highly recommended for course readers. Annemieke Van Damme-Linseele presents fresh interpretative material based on fieldwork in 1990-91 among the Nkanu of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers offers a helpful descriptive overview of the visual culture of East Africa, drawing heavily on important collections made by Spiritan missionaries in the former Tanganyika. The strength of Grootaers's essay lies in his evocation of the intercultural relationships embedded in the objects. In another essay, Grootaers draws on his own long experience with the Zande to historicize a people made famous (and timeless) by the publication of E. Evans-Pritchard's much-cited Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande in 1937.

Grootaers's careful historicizing of his subject highlights by contrast the only real flaw in this publication: the absence of dates in the labels. While it is true that dates like "late 19th century" often serve no more than a modernist fiction of precolonial origins, even the use of an acquisition date works against the myth of timeless Africa. Also, the date of collection often provides an important historical marker, since many African objects were intended to enjoy a fixed life span. (2) In the case of Witte's essay on the Yoruba, I was reminded of a cynic who murmured recently at a conference: "When will Yoruba specialists tell us how many Yoruba actually honor the orisha today? Ten percent?" I hope that in his catalogue devoted to the Yoruba collection, Witte will tell us something (however briefly) of the impact of millions of Muslims and Christians on the arts and worldview of the Yoruba.

In his essay on contemporary art, Wouter Welling calls attention to the transfer of Felix Valk's significant collection to the Afrika Museum through the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (p. 175). He compares Valk's collection, covering the years 1960 99, to that of Jean Pigozzi in terms of quality. Welling provides an overview of the key debates in the contemporary field but becomes mired in a definitional quagmire. (3) It is unfortunate that he begins by asserting: "African art was almost always associated with religious practices" (p. 175). (4) So long as "traditional" arts speak only to religion and the "contemporary" speaks about everything else, the structural contrast will reinforce the cherished romantic fallacy that, before European contact, Africans were uninterested in the material world and therefore cannot be expected to experience modernity without a loss of self.

Grootaers, in his essay "About Art in East Africa, and Why There Is (Or Seems to Be) So Little of it," contradicts Welling's claim. He argues that the canon has to reflect the fact that baskets, jewelry, headrests, and stools in fact comprised the "bulk of East African artistic output" (p. 319). (5) Also, he maintains, "East African figurative sculpture is focused on status and occupation, rather than on religion and ritual as elsewhere in Africa" (p. 328). However, the impact of his remarks is contained because he is discussing a region historically framed as exceptional. The larger question might be: How would the inclusion of East African arts change how we study visual culture elsewhere in Africa? Would the methodologies developing in East Africa better enable scholars to integrate the decorative and secular arts into the history of West and Central Africa? In this sense, it would have been strategic for the publication to devote another extended essay to one of the museum's exceptional collections of decorative or secular arts rather than segregate them strictly into "thematic interludes." To take one possibility, analysis of the extraordinary collection of Woyo pot lids would have opened the door to entire worlds of experience largely absent in this publication (marriage, politics, indirect discourse, etc.). (6)

The museological essays address the institution's mission, exhibition philosophy, history, and issues of ethics and repatriation. They are self-reflexive and unusually honest. Ineke Eisenburger, director since 1989, traced the evolution of their experiential exhibition strategy: Originally, the museum invited "visitors to marvel at 'an alien world of idols and sorcery,'" but this changed in the 1960s when the first curator, Father van Croonenburg, used aesthetic display to evoke "admiration of Africans' artistic skills" (p. 11). Building on this groundwork, the museum added more context in the 1980s. Today, "[w]e want to let visitors experience not only how richly meaningful these objects are in their cultures of origin, but also how meaningful they can be to us, by providing a reflection of our own culture" (p. 12). Eisenburger explains the growing commitment of the Afrika Museum to exhibit work by contemporary artists from Africa and its diaspora by the bold acknowledgment that Dutch society has also become "multicultural": "Emigration has spread African culture all over the world, including here. We believe it is important to show that culture as part of our contemporary society, as an aspect of our increasingly colourful Dutch heritage" (p. 19).

Wouter Welling gives an extremely useful and balanced overview of the Spiritans and the institutional history of the Afrika Museum. Jacob Libermann, responsible for a focus on Africa following the merging of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary with the Congregation of the Holy Spirit in 1847, was strikingly out of step with the scientific racism developing in France. In 1847 he advised missionaries in Dakar and Gabon: "Do not judge by what you have seen in Europe, nor by what you are accustomed to in Europe. Ignore Europe, ignore its habits, ignore its mentality. Try to become African with the Africans...." (p. 38). Nevertheless, as Welling notes, the attitudes of individual missionaries varied and did not always conform to Libermann's vision (p. 39). Some of this complexity comes out in the life of Jan Vissers, a priest who lived for twenty-five years among the Woyo of Cabinda and Angola. Inspired to burn a "fetish house" at one point, he became a great advocate for the secular arts and is responsible for the museum's remarkable collection of seventy-three pot lids, which he carefully documented in the field (p. 43). Elsewhere, he appears as a sponsor of pottery (ill. 690) and of excavations of soapstone stele in Angola (ill. 460). He also advocated the Christianizing of local symbolism (p. 44). One wonders to what degree the museum's outstanding Angolan collections are due to Vissers' enthusiasm. Did his passion inspire his colleagues? Although many more Spiritan priests served in Cameroon (p. 32), the collections there do not seem as significant (if the catalogue is representative).

In "Alien yet Familiar," Ulrike Weinhold articulates the exhibition policy governing several projects for which she acted as consultant. Weinhold argues that "one of the most important tasks for ethnological museums" is "to break away from these deep-rooted dichotomies between 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity', 'rationality" and "irrationality', art and reality. intercultural dialogue could show that, rather than breaking in upon us from outside, what is alien comes from within, from the dichotomised structures of our own culture, which are then projected outwards, onto other cultures" (p. 368). In particular, she argues that the aestheticization of African works has served as a mechanism intended to keep them at a safe distance. Instead, she would like to see ethnological museums acknowledge these objects' power to enchant, to inspire people to search for meanings. Ultimately, studying other cultures is vital "for the activation or reactivation of repressed or unused potential" (p. 375). Her goal is to have "'[a]lien' objects break in upon us" and become part of us (p. 367).

Weinhold's argument is troubling, to say the least, as it reflects nothing more than a resurgence of primitivism repackaged to speak of "subjectivity" rather than "magic" or the "unconscious." (7) From the beginning, modernists have chosen to believe that Africans (and later, Native Americans) experience a spiritual wholeness lost to the alienated modern psyche. In the long run, this representation is just as exoticizing as any other, even if it appears less negative.

In contrast Shaje Tshiluila places African art in a wider world when she investigates some of the problems of conserving and exhibiting African art objects at a time when globalization favors the free trade of commodities across borders. She also addresses exhibition policy, favoring "contextualisation" because it respects the object as a "vehicle of culture" (p. 398) and because it can create a range of different atmospheres (p. 402). In her analysis of three exhibitions, she judges that the choice of cultural, linguistic, historical, or artistic "data" is best supervised by sensitivity to the relationships fostered by the exhibition, whether of the individual to the past, or one cultural group to another (pp. 398-402). Never forgetting the relationship of these objects to Africa itself, she affirms: "In my view the restitution of irreplaceable cultural goods is a vital issue which, rather than being left to governments and politicians, needs to be tackled in accordance with scientific, professional principles" (p. 405).

At a time when the photography of sculpture in general is being problematized and historicized (Frizot & Paini 1993; Johnson 1998), it behooves the field to think analytically about the implications of various photographic strategies in its publications. (8) In this case, the photographer Ferry Herrebrugh achieves some stunning effects. For example, many of the figures are lit so that they seem to generate a pearly light from within (e.g., ills. 18, 265, 308, 312). This effect (as in a Rembrandt portrait) creates a strong sensation of presence and tactile aliveness. (9) Herrebrugh avoids the two extremes of contemporary African art photography, neither flooding the object with a bland, even light (thereby stressing its silhouette and genre identification) nor enshrouding the object in a "heart of darkness" realm of shadow. In Herrebrugh's hands, the objects manifest an individual personality rare in the depiction of African works.

Despite the wide range of topics and objects discussed, the coherence and consistency of this major opus are impressive, tied together by the elegant unifying concept of "Forms of Wonderment." As articulated by Wilfried van Damme, many of the African objects depicted are expressions of marvel "at the mysteries of life and the human condition" (p. 25). However, the museum wishes to emphasize that the objects continue to inspire "a wonderment that seizes people's attention, fires their imagination and arouses their curiosity" about other people and places (p. 25). This sentiment led to the founding of the Afrika Museum and to changes in life's direction for many of the contributors to the catalogue. Indeed, to borrow a related concept from Kongo, the variety of objects and the intricacy of their presentation in this work cannot fail to arouse "astonishment" (ngitukulu) "in the mind of the beholder, suggesting the presence of something extraordinary." (10) As this "not-catalogue" makes clear, the collection of the Afrika Museum is of world-class importance.

Notes

(1.) Letter to Z. S. Strother, dated October 24, 2000.

(2.) For example, Woyo pot lids were once destroyed following the death of their owners (p. 43).

(3.) There are also some misleading statements, such as: "Ever since independence, cities have exerted a powerful attraction on Africans as centres of modern life" (p. 181). Unfortunately, this phrasing will suggest to readers that there were no cities before the colonial period (despite Witte's references to Yoruba urbanism [p. 94]) or that cities were not equally attractive during the colonial period. For a contrary perspective on the latter point, see Martin 1995.

(4.) See Koloss 2002:17-19 for a concise and nuanced discussion of this persistent misconception.

(5.) The omission of body painting and cicatrization is curious.

(6.) The publication of a small catalogue on the proverbs illustrated by the pot lids by no means exhausts the possibilities for presenting this seminal collection (Vissers & Eisenburger 1985).

(7.) For example, compare Weinhold's formulations to John Graham's defense of Picasso in 1937: "Primitive races and primitive genius have readier access to their unconscious mind than so-called civilized people. It should be understood that the unconscious mind is the creative factor and the source and the storehouse of power and of all knowledge, past and future. The conscious mind is but a critical factor and clearing house. Therefore the art of primitive races has a highly evocative quality which allows it to bring to our consciousness the clarifies of the unconscious mind, stored with all the individual and collective wisdom of past generations and forms. In other words, an evocative art is the means and the result of getting in touch with the powers of our unconscious. It stimulates us to move and act along the intuitional line in our life procedure" (pp 249-50). Similar beliefs were voiced by and about the Abstract Expressionists, Weinhold's vocabulary has shifted, but the idea continues that theft' is a fundamental rift in the Western psyche between the objective/subjective (rational / irrational) realms that may be healed by recourse to the art of Africa, the Pacific, etc. Weinhold would simply transfer to the ethnological museum the right claimed earlier by artist-"geniuses" to be intercessor and exorcist (Picasso, in Flam & Deutch 2003:33).

(8.) At the invitation of Susan Vogel, Jerry L. Thompson questioned the relationship of looking at and photographing African sculpture in 1990, but this provocative photo essay has not yet enjoyed the attention it deserves.

(9.) This technique seems to work best with softly modeled objects. In other cases, the multiple lights can throw confusing shadows that read more as smudges than as aids to articulating form (ill. 212).

(10.) For ngitukulu, see MacGaffey 1993:63.

References cited

Flam, Jack (ed.) with Miriam Deutch. 2003. Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Frizot, Michel, and Dominique Paini (eds.). 1993. Sculpter/Photographier, Photographie/Sculpture. Paris: Musee du Louvre.

Graham, John D. 2003 [1937], "Primitive Art and Picasso," in Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art, ed. Jack Flam with Miriam Deutch, pp. 248-51. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Johnson, Geraldine A. 1998. Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Koloss, Hans-Joachim. 2002. "Traditions of African Art: Ethnological Research and Aesthetic Judgements," in Africa--Art and Culture, ed. Hans-Joachim Koloss, pp. 8-31. New York: Prestel 

MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1993. "The Eyes of Understanding," in Astonishment and Power, by W. MacGaffey and Michael D. Harris, pp. 18-103. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Martin, Phyllis M. 1995. Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville. Cambridge (England): Cambridge University Press.

McClusky, Pamela. 2002. Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum.

Thompson, Jerry L. 1990. "Some Thoughts on Looking at African Sculpture: An Essay in Pictures and Words," in Close-Up: Lessons in the Art of Seeing African Sculpture from an American Collection and the Horstmann Collection, by Jerry L. Thompson, Susan Vogel, and Anne d'Alleva, pp. 9-73. New York: The Center for African Art.

Vissers, Jan, and Ineke Eisenburger. 1985. Spreekwoorden in Beeld. Berg en Dal: Afrika Museum.