Memory and medicine at the British Museum.

Much discussion of African art has dealt with where it fits into the bigger picture. Some of the earliest discussion, of course, simply asked how it could get into the picture--any picture. The critical theorists posed more questions. How should we frame the picture? How should we look at it? How do we deconstruct it? Others asked, How much does it cost? Where can I buy it? How do we repatriate it? The questions continue, but for the past twenty years African art (i.e., traditional/classical/old/used African art) has registered solidly on the academic radar screen. It is now even a regular on the TV screen, appearing in the set decoration of series with social and cultural situations as varied as those in The Cosby Show, The Hughleys, Frasier, Will & Grace, and the recent It's All Relative. (I want to make myself perfectly clear: I tried each of these shows only trace, and I didn't inhale.) The picture is pretty much the same for current museum practices. Unfortunately, in some institutions the African galleries seem more like supporting actors than star performers in the museum. Still, for better or worse, African art (although not contemporary African art) has assumed a matter-of-fact presence in the permanent exhibitions of our large encyclopedic museums and in cross cultural temporary exhibitions with a global reach.

The latter was the case with two recent exhibitions at the British Museum. "The Museum of the Mind: Art and Memory in World Cultures" (April 15-September 7, 2003) celebrated the 250th anniversary of the founding of the British Museum and was curated by John Mack, Keeper of Ethnography. "Medicine Man: The Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome" (June 26-November 16, 2003) was mounted by the Wellcome Trust to commemorate the 150th anniversary of its namesake's birth and was curated by Ken Arnold and Danielle Olsen. Both exhibitions were accompanied by books of the same name. Both featured collections largely assembled as part of the British colonial experience. Although in principle the agendas of the two institutions were significantly different, in practice both assembled encyclopedic holdings that seem to have been the result of a giant vacuum cleaner sucking up the material culture of planet Earth. And to the extent that memory is viewed today as a significant component of one's well-being, both projects dealt with issues of health and the human experience. Yet these installations provided a provocative contrast in exhibition strategies.

By far the more conventional and coherent of the two was "Museum of the Mind." It followed a clearly delineated path through five carefully defined sections featuring objects drawn from different time periods and from around the world, but exclusively from the British Museum's own collections. The installation opened with a floor-to-ceiling altar in the shape of the museum's portico by the Mexican artist Eugenio Reyes. It featured a portrait of Sir Hans Sloane, who founded the museum with his bequest in 1753. Although looking more like a monumental wedding cake than a reverential altar, the installation was nonetheless an appropriate device to celebrate a 250th anniversary. This first section, titled "The Museum as Theatre of Memory," set the stage not for a history of the British Museum but rather for the themes of memory and commemoration and how the arts serve as permutations of these. Although the ongoing repatriation debates surrounding objects in the British Museum (e.g., the Parthenon sculptures) were not addressed in the exhibition, in the accompanying publication John Mack cleverly and thoughtfully positions them so that the negotiation and reclamation of the past are part of the "theatre of memory."

Opposite the altar was the second section and the first of four three-tiered section headers, "aide-memoire/In the Mind's Eye/Objects Created as Aids to Memorize," which had the largest concentration of African works. Here the majestic wood figure (ndop) of the Kuba king Shyaam-a-Mbul Ngwoong, founder of the Kuba kingdom, was serenely placed adjacent to a marble portrait of the Greek dramatist Euripides. The sculpture of the Kuba king was interpreted not just as a simple work of commemoration but as a document of history that invoked royal genealogies and acts of accomplishment. Also representing mnemonic devices in the exhibition was a Luba lukasa, or "memory board," which helped oral historians recall such things as family histories and culture heroes. Similarly a pair of Lega ivory figures from the bwami society referenced proverbs important to the enlightenment and advancement of initiates within the society. A remarkable Kongo power figure (nkisi) was also conceptually framed within this section; the blades and nails inserted into the figure were event specific, and the doing and undoing of an oath to the nkisi required powerful acts of memory--quite unlike pre-election promises in the United States, which involve no subsequent acts of memory at all.

Osi Audu's 1998 Monoprint ("Juju"), with its mass of safety pins, wool, and plaited hair, was also positioned here. The artist frequently refers to his works as "containers for memory." In the publication Mack writes: "He has in mind the idea that a sense of self is constructed through memory, the self is a projection forward of remembered experiences into present time. Each of us derives our selfhood from our ability to remember" (p. 25).

The interconnection of memory and identity was a leitmotif throughout the exhibition, and explicitly so in the third section titled "Mindful/Living Memory/Powerful Images as a Source of Memory," which dealt primarily with portraiture. Although many African examples might have been embraced here (see African Arts' special issues on portraiture, July and October 1990), most were drawn from European and Asian cultures. The lone exception was the splendid Benin bronze plaque depicting an Oba with mudfish legs holding an airborne leopard by the tail with each hand. (I have always thought that image of leopard juggling a perfect metaphor for supernatural powers.) Conventionally identified with the early-fifteenth-century king Oba Ohen, the image was presented here as a more generalized portrayal of kingship.

The fourth section, "Memorial/Commemoration/Monuments, Tombs, Memorials, Rituals," addressed works that link memory and death. It was dominated by three impressive coffins: an ornate Egyptian example from circa 300 B.C.; a Roman funerary monument in marble of a reclining woman and her deceased husband, from the first century A.D.; and a "fantasy coffin" of the type made famous by the Ghanaian artist Kane Kwai and representing a Winchester rifle (as spelled out on the side). Considering that the British Museum also owns Ghanaian coffins in the shape of an eagle, an elephant, and a Mercedes Benz, the firearm might seem an odd choice. Perhaps some irony was intended here: guns and death end memory for some and stimulate memory for others.

The final section, "Memento/Holy Relics and Memorabilia/Memories of Other Places and of Other Times," addressed "memories of other places and other times." The idea of the pilgrimage was foregrounded and also the tokens which recalled the visit. Souvenirs, of course, are also the product of more secular travel as were the famous "Afro-Portuguese" ivory salt cellars and the carved ivory tusks from the Loango coast. The curator also engaged the British idea of the "Grand Tour" and the acquisitions that were both its products and documents. The rise of photography as a process for recording memories ended this section.

The succinct but thought-provoking labels in "Museum of the Mind" within a content-centered exhibition consistently engaged visitors with a wide variety of cultural and social backgrounds. It was a terrific and, dare I say, memorable exhibition. And Africa was pleasantly balanced with the rest of the world.

Occupying roughly the same amount of space but with five times the number of objects, "Medicine Man" was an entirely different story. Like the above project, it featured many major works of African art, but in this case they were all drawn from materials collected by Sir Henry Wellcome. Born in 1853 in Wisconsin, Wellcome worked for his uncle Jacob, a doctor who also owned a pharmacy, and subsequently trained as a pharmacist in Chicago and Philadelphia. In 1880 he joined Silas Burroughs in London and founded the pharmaceutical firm Burroughs Wellcome & Co. One of Wellcome's early claims to fame was the 1884 coining of the word "tabloid" in reference to compressed tablets in measured dosages. (Its meaning as a condensed, usually half-sized newspaper with sensationalized content came much later.) The firm prospered, and with Burroughs's death in 1895, Wellcome became the sole owner, eventually acquiring substantial wealth. He assumed British citizenship in 1911 and gained a knighthood in 1932, Wellcome died in 1936.

Although a collector of books and objects since he was a young man, Wellcome accelerated his collecting around 1895 and eventually amassed more than a million objects. A substantial number related to medicine and health and to "aboriginal" and "primitive" cultures, categories that obviously have considerable overlap. Unlike the British Museum, which protectively holds on to its collections, a significant percentage of the Wellcome Collection was dispersed after World War II to such institutions as the National Museums of Scotland and the British Museum; between 1965 and 1967 about 30,000 objects went to what is now the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. The "Medicine Man" exhibition was drawn from these collections and others, as well as from the still substantial holdings of the Wellcome Trust. The trust continues to operate as one of the world's best-endowed philanthropic institutions, supporting research designed to improve human and animal health.

That said, "Medicine Man" was one of the most peculiar exhibitions I have ever seen. It began conventionally enough with six focus objects or groups of objects, each one informed by three audio perspectives. For the Shuar shrunken head, for example, one could listen to an ethnographer describing how it was made, a museum curator reflecting on the ethics of displaying human remains, and a Shuar song. Also displayed in this preliminary section was a wall of photographs and text introducing Wellcome and the history of his collections.

At the entry to the main exhibition space, visitors picked up a free, heavily illustrated, forty-page newsprint tabloid from a "newspaper stand." It included a full listing of all works in the exhibition and all section labels plus extended labels for many objects. Despite the popular culture baggage of its format suggesting the lurid and the sensational, this latter-day tabloid was a useful prologue.

The main exhibition gallery was composed of fifteen large display cases arranged in no apparent order. Six of these featured objects loosely grouped by biomedical theme: Body under attack, Beginning of life, End of life, Understanding the body, Seeking help, and Treating yourself (in the order listed in the tabloid). The assignment of objects across cultures to any one of these categories ranged from the arbitrary and humorous to the disturbing and offensive. The umbrella label for "Beginning of life" indicated that the case dealt with "sex, fertility, conception and birth." As with most exhibitions, the adjacencies were clearly telling. The nearly fifty items included a European iron chastity belt next to an English male anti-masturbation device. Two fertility-inducing Asante Akua'mma figures stood to the side of a stone copulating couple vaguely identified as South American and a Chinese reclining ivory couple "engaged in foreplay." These appeared immediately above a box of Japanese sexual aids. A wood sculpture said to be from the Bazombo of Angola depicted a woman in childbirth (a theme quite rare in African art), which was positioned just to the right of a graphically detailed French(?) oil painting of a woman giving birth. Perhaps one could make a good argument that a Mende sowei mask used in female initiation rites belonged in this section, but the Yoruba epa mask was less convincing. If the case had contained more extensive labeling, viewers might have had an easier time sorting out all of this. On the other hand, they might not have had as much fun.

Adjacencies in some of the other sections were just as provocative and disconcerting. In "End of life," a spectacular Mbole figure from the Democratic Republic of the Congo was canonically characterized as representing a hanged man intended to warn against moral and legal transgressions in Mbole culture. Immediately below was a guillotine blade "used at the execution of Jean-Baptiste Carrier who committed war atrocities during the French revolution." A label further informed the viewer, perhaps with some irony, that the guillotine was invented to make executions more humane. A Kota reliquary figure from Gabon and an Akan funerary terracotta from Ghana were also in this section, the latter next to an English tobacco resuscitation kit used to revive the "apparently dead" by blowing tobacco smoke up the rectum. Since a number of Akan terracottas depict a deceased royal smoking a pipe, it was probably a missed opportunity that one of these was not selected instead. Surmounting the stepped installation furniture in this section was a Pre-Columbian mummified male body from the Chimu culture of Peru. Considering the Shuar shrunken head, a collection of tattooed human skins, and an assortment of skulls, it is obvious that "Medicine Man" did not pursue the politically correct path of avoiding the display of human remains.

The remaining eight sections in the exhibition were organized by medium or object type. The case benignly labeled "Metalware" actually featured only two implement types. On one side visitors saw thirty-five amputation saws arranged in rough chronological order, and on the other, a row of twenty-eight obstetrical forceps, also arranged by date. (This display gave new meaning to the term "heavy metal.") Functional content aside, in strictly formal terms this installation was strangely beautiful. Other sections included: Artificial limbs, Ex-voto paintings, Photographs, Glassware, Masks, Oil paintings, and Votive offerings. There were many spectacular African examples, but the masks were surprisingly among the least effective (and affective).

Off to the side and probably missed by most exhibition visitors was a ten-minute film called Phantom Museum, made by the Brothers Quay (the professional name of the identical twins Stephen and Timothy Quay). Best known for their stop-action short films inspired by the brilliant Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer (see his Alice [in Wonderland]), Phantom Museum is a surreal after-hours visit to the Wellcome storerooms. It begins with the impression of a stalker or peeping Tom slowly climbing the stairs followed by a slightly erotic episode of an anatomical model coming to life and a birthing chair going through its motions. No African art here ... perhaps thankfully.

In parts "Medicine Man" engaged the voyeuristic, the fetishistic, the fatalistic, and probably the septic. One was tempted to command, "Curators, heal thyselves!" Yet I often whispered, "It hurts so good!" The overall feel of the exhibition was ultimately something like Edward Steichen's 1955 book and exhibition The Family of Man meets Gualtiero Jacopetti's 1963 film Mondo Cane: we all share a common humanity and are part of the same mega-family, except for all the poor bastards out there whom no one wants to identify with. In the exhibition it was Europe and Asia that were the kinky continents, not Africa. "Medicine Man" actually contained a terrific assortment of African art and few of the stereotypes typically assigned to the continent of our species's birth. It was a refreshing change of pace.

Although it is increasingly common for curators to spell out their exhibition goals and their criteria for object selection at the beginning of the installation, such was not the case here. Nevertheless, in reference to the visual essays in the book, which correspond to the six biomedical sections of the exhibition, curators Arnold and Olsen write (p. 45):

   ... we have tried to choose things that
   might delight the eye or challenge the
   mind. Consequently our cornucopia has
   the serious rubbing shoulders with the
   frivolous, the beautiful sharing space
   with the ugly, and little-known objects
   spotlighted just as prominently as others
   more talked about. In a fashion that has
   inspired much recent work in museums,
   we too have been motivated by the desires
   and instincts of collectors and curators
   from an altogether earlier era of
   museum history, borrowing something
   from the spirit of the Wunderkammern,
   or "cabinet of wonder." In exploring the
   collection, we were by turns interested
   in and drawn to the beautiful, the weird,
   the important and the unusual, and have
   selected objects which not only help us
   to tell medical stories but also which
   simply stopped us in our tracks.

This might not be a bad model for an all-African exhibition--something of a neo-anachronism married to a kind of retro post-modernism.

If traditional / classical / old / used African art can now be seen as a taken-for granted part of the big picture, it is somewhat ironic that it is also being edged out of the smaller academic one. Contemporary African art has increasingly come to dominate current discourse, with considerable yet refreshing scholarship following two trajectories. There is the Magnin-Martin-Pigozzi picture of contemporary African art that generally favors self-taught, naive, "uncorrupted" artists still living in villages, and the Hassan-Oguibe-Enwezor picture that privileges academically trained and well-traveled artists, who more often than not live in major cities outside Africa. The preliminary program for the upcoming Thirteenth Triennial Symposium on African Art, to be held in Boston from March 31 to April 4, 2004, is concrete evidence of this change (as was the last Triennial). Built around the theme "African Art: Roots and Routes," the event will feature considerably more of the latter than the former, as proposals for panels on contemporary art outnumber those on its antecedents by perhaps three to one. At least ten major encyclopedic metropolitan museums in the United States (St. Louis, Atlanta, Houston, among others) are currently planning to originate "important" exhibitions on contemporary African art. Several have already taken loan exhibitions organized by others. It seems clear to me that within the next decade, contemporary African art will also be a significant part of the museum picture--one hopes alongside, but not at the expense of, earlier African material.