Sub-Saharan Africa Gallery Reinstallation.

Cleveland Museum of Art 

In 2003 the Cleveland Museum of Art reopened its African art gallery. Here, Constantine Petridis, the museum's curator of African art, carries out a reinstallation at once conservative, in its adherence to traditional categories and organization, and animated, thanks to informative label text, gallery cards, and interactive media that allow the visitor to make alternative choices to those made by the curator.

In the entry panel to the Sub-Saharan Africa gallery, visitors are introduced to the geography of the African continent in a map that highlights the regions featured in the exhibition. At present, about 60% of the collection is exhibited, and the installation is organized geographically by region, defined here as Western Sudan, Guinea Coast, Nigeria, and Congo Basin. In an online Curator's Highlight Tour, Petridis explains that in this gallery, "Objects from the same culture are shown together and contrasted with those of their neighbors. This arrangement illustrates the formal and stylistic relationships between neighboring artistic traditions and emphasizes the uniqueness of the arts of distinct peoples." The regions are discretely labeled with individual introductory texts.

In addition to the overarching regional framework, thematic connections are highlighted through the use of gallery cards, which expand on the topics of artists, leadership, masks and masquerades, styles, and the supernatural. Gallery cards provide photos of featured objects, descriptions and narrative text linking objects in different regional sections, and a schematic of their location within the gallery, in effect leading visitors on self-guided tours. The gallery cards are also available online in downloadable PDF format (http://www.cleve landart.org/exhibcef/africa/africagcards.pdf).

The exhibition consists exclusively of tradition-based work from Sub-Saharan Africa. The introductory text panel acknowledges the limit of the geographic and chronological range of the collection to West and Central Africa, and to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with a nod to more distant histories through archaeological works in terracotta and metal from Nok and Djenne, a Sapi stone figure (fifteenth century), and works in metal and ivory from the Benin kingdom (sixteenth to nineteenth century). Petridis has done well to collect textiles since he took over the collection, as it significantly enhances the range of materials represented.

Moreover, in identifying the gallery specifically as Sub-Saharan Africa, Petridis implicitly acknowledges the organizational principles that underlie the institution writ large. Other parts of the continent are represented elsewhere in the museum, with the Egyptian collections in the Western classical department and North African in the Middle Eastern department. The introductory label points visitors to these related collections of Egyptian and Islamic North African material in nearby galleries. Though this division of the African continent could be challenged, for the purposes of the CMA, its collection, and the curatorial staff's organization, it is certainly appropriate, even if not ideal.

Labels throughout offer context images as illustrations and allow for stories and dynamism that are not possible within the confines of a straight text-label format. Overall, however, the emphasis is on the object rather than the text. Throughout the gallery, the text is informative without overpowering the objects, whose formal and aesthetic qualities are certainly privileged. This is a notable departure from the previous installation, Petridis notes, in which the same space was overcrowded with objects, recalling a curiosity cabinet characteristic of the era in which much of the collection was assembled. While some labels tend to be text-heavy, this is balanced by the fact that the information therein is essential (though not essentialized) and provides contextual information that facilitates the experience for viewers with little knowledge of Africa. For instance, text labels will suggest how a mask was worn or used, thereby providing an element of animation where context photos are not included. Rather than detracting from appreciation of the object's formal aesthetic, I find that this approach enhances it. For the next reinstallation (slated for 2012), it would be interesting for the curatorial and design departments to work together to find an alternative solution that would allow access to information without crowding the labels and cases, a problem certainly not unique to fine art exhibitions, especially of non-Western art in general collections. However, this is more of a design problem than a curatorial one.

Midway through the gallery, an interactive station provides an important educational tool not only for the casual visitor, but also for use by teachers who bring school groups to the gallery. The interactive component was designed in collaboration with Amanda Carlson, whose film footage from Nigeria's Cross River region provides the foundation for a dynamic educational experience. Carlson's film footage provides a critical contextual component, as several masquerade figures are featured in performance. Though the interactive itself takes the nearby Ejagham mask as its point of departure, in effect it speaks to many more articles in the gallery, a significant portion of which are face masks or headdresses. Three short films also based on the Ejagham mask comprise one component of the interactive and enable more issues to be addressed, namely women's decoration, diaspora movement, and masquerade performance. It is to be hoped that the multiple possible readings of this mask will lead viewers to understand that the same is true for other objects in the collection.

Educators can call up a hidden screen with integrated programming so that students are engaged with educational materials in the gallery itself rather than waiting until returning to the classroom. In addition, the screen interface engages students via a medium through which today's youth is accustomed to assimilating information and uses multimedia to a great educational advantage. However, the prominent interactive screen may not appeal to museum purists. When I visited the gallery, I witnessed a conversation between Petridis and two museum visitors from the local community about the advantages and disadvantages of such an interactive. While one visitor acknowledged the value of additional information that could not otherwise be incorporated into label text (e.g., multimedia content), he expressed concern that the interactive screen detracted from the viewing experience and aesthetic appreciation of objects in the gallery, which should be permitted to "speak for themselves." From a generational perspective, it is perhaps not surprising that this middle-aged visitor was skeptical of the interactive screen, and Petridis is to be commended for incorporating this valuable educational component into the gallery proper. In a municipal institution that hosts diverse audiences with varying degrees of knowledge about Africa and African art, the educational advantages far outweigh any disadvantages.

Given the creative use of technology in the gallery, its rather uninspired website comes as a surprise. The CMA website overall is rather unbalanced, with some areas more engaging and easily navigable than others. Unfortunately, the African Gallery pages are among the less inspired and more inaccessible. Clicking through the home page's Collections link the visitor is led to an extensive collection database with information about individual objects in the Africa collection. However, there is no link from the Collections site to the more interpretive Gallery site, which it took me several minutes to find. When I tried to return later, I was not able to find it again, even using the "search" feature which found no hits for "Africa," "African," or "Sub-Saharan" (and this from someone who is tech savvy; I wonder how the general public would fare). Let us suppose, though, that a visitor does find the Gallery site: While the content is fine (apart from outdated programming information), the design renders the information less accessible. For example, visitors are alerted that there are eight pages to click through, but reach a dead end at page 5 when clicking through sequentially. Also, I think more attention should be drawn to the downloadable gallery cards, an excellent resource that is too easily missed. Finally, one wonderful feature of the CMA site is the collections information available to the public--however, there is no link to the Collections site from the African Gallery home page (and vice versa).

One interesting aspect of the Sub-Saharan Gallery is its location adjacent to the modern and contemporary galleries. When I visited the CMA in December, 2003, and April, 2004, a vessel by Magdalene Odundo gracefully provided a transition from one gallery to the next, as an accompanying label addressed the "traditional/contemporary conundrum" for viewers. I was somewhat dismayed to learn that the vessel may soon be removed from the gallery at the behest of the curator in whose collection the vessel resides--Baroque and Later Decorative Arts and Sculpture--although I understand this is merely one possibility in a friendly exchange. With a more abrupt transition, the underlying implications of the African gallery's proximity to the modern-contemporary galleries will read more problematically and will instead raise the specter of African art's influence (read: "primitivism") on modern European artists. This is particularly striking in light of the CMA's exhibition history, as the museum was one of few regional venues for the "African Negro Art" exhibit organized by the Museum of Modern Art in the 1930s. Indeed, the CMA acquired some of the objects from the MoMA show as a result. The location of the Odundo vessel has temporarily attenuated that historical tension, and I hope that more attention will be paid to this dynamic in the 2012 reinstallation.

In short, the CMA Sub-Saharan Africa gallery will appeal to various audiences. There is certainly a scholarly contribution in the material presented in the gallery and in the accompanying exhibition catalogue, South of the Sahara: Selected Works of African Art (2004). The catalogue discusses the African collection's history, placing objects not only in their original cultural settings through narrative text and contextual photos, but also in the current local context of Cleveland. The presentation and interactive media speak to diverse audiences, notably students and teachers, and Petridis has made the collection accessible to audiences with a range of interests. The current installation is but one step in an ongoing process and this is certainly a step in the right direction. I look forward to seeing what Petridis will do in the upcoming years with more space to accommodate these limited but rich collections.