The Metropolitan Museum of art, New York. (new acquisitions).

The works from Africa selected for the current "Recent Acquisitions" installation on view in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing (May 22-October 28) reflect an appreciation for the breadth, diversity, and vitality of the continent's cultural heritage. Since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sculptural traditions in wood from sub-Saharan Africa have been the focus of African-art collecting in the West. While the exceptional accomplishments of African sculptors in representing the human form through wood sculpture continue to be the focus of collections such as that of the Metropolitan Museum, there has been a growing appreciation of other forms of artistic expression in recent decades.

These acquisitions of the last five years fill significant gaps in the African holdings. They range from classic iconic sculptural genres admired in the West for over a century, such as an exceptionally lovely mukudj mask from Gabon carved by a Punu sculptor in the nineteenth century, to an outstanding silk mantle woven in 1998 by a Malagasy master, Martin Rakotoarimanana, that represents a contemporary revival of an important precolonial textile tradition.

Many of the new acquisitions of African art in this exhibition challenge long-held assumptions about the continent's cultural isolation. A group of artifacts from Ethiopia and the kingdom of Kongo are important documents of Africa's longstanding engagement with Christianity over the centuries. Examples of textile traditions from west, central, and east Africa reflect a range of distinctive aesthetics that rank among the most esteemed forms of expression in their cultures. Furthermore, while wood sculpture is generally the prerogative of male sculptors in Africa, the textile arts and a group of fired terracotta vessels from Cote d'Ivoire celebrate the creative talents of female artists.

The broadening of the canon of African art in recent decades has also led to acknowledgment of the mastery of the abstract forms of decorative arts that are the focus of creative expression in southern and eastern Africa. Utilitarian works that were created to enhance the lives of their owners and are related intimately to their identities range from a pair of small headrests from South Africa to a monumental tent furnishing covered with applied beadwork that was designed for a Beja nomad's tent in Sudan.

Alisa LaGamma
Associate Curator
Department of the Arts of Africa,
Oceania, and the Americas

Left:

Triple crucifix
Kongo peoples, Angola/Democratic Republic of the Congo
17th century
Wood, brass; 26.2cm (10.3")
Gift of Ernst Anspach, 1999 (1999.295.15)

The central African kingdom of Kongo, with its capital at Mbanza Kongo, was founded as early as 1400. When the Portuguese navigator Diego Cao first arrived at the mouth of the Zaire in 1483, Kongo was identified as an ideal trading partner in light of its centralized government, system of rotating markets, and national currency. At the same time, European missionaries and technicians were invited to the kingdom as the guests of a powerful and unconquered African head of state.

As part of their participation in an international community of sovereign nations, the kings of Kongo adopted Christianity as the state religion. In doing so they found parallels between their indigenous world view and that introduced by the West, and they reinterpreted Catholic rituals so that they complemented their own religious system. Their alliance with the Vatican afforded them a degree of diplomatic leverage and autonomy from Portugal as trade developed with the West during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

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Right:

Crucifix
Kongo peoples, Angola/Democratic Republic of the Congo
16th/early 17th century
Brass; 27.4cm (10.8")
Gift of Ernst Anspach, 1999 (1999.295.7)

The Christian icon of the crucifix was easily integrated into Kongo religious practices beginning in the fifteenth century. As scholars have emphasized, this development reflects the fact that the cross as a powerful emblem of spirituality predated contact with the West. According to the Kongo conception of human experience, the cross is at once a metaphor for the cosmos and a diagram of the trajectory of a human life as it traverses the realms of the living and the ancestors. As the kings of Kongo became the principal promoters of Christianity in the region, they commissioned local representations of the crucifixion as emblems of their leadership and power. Copper, the primary material used in these works, was a precious commodity traded between Africa and the West and a powerful local signifier of wealth, prestige, and rank.

It appears that initially the Kongo artists responsible for producing such objects faithfully followed European prototypes brought into the region by Portuguese and Italian missionaries. The stylistic diversity of the corpus of known works in this tradition is due to the continual adaption and reinterpretation of the imagery, so that it became more thoroughly assimilated into local idioms of expression.

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Top:

Saint Anthony pectoral (Toni Malau)
Kongo peoples, Angola/Democratic Republic of the Congo
18th century
Brass; 10.2cm (4")
Gift of Ernst Anspach, 1999 (1999.295.1)

In 1704 a Kongo visionary called Dona Beatrice, or Kimpa Vita, launched a movement known as Antonianism that called for reforming the local church as a means of fortifying the Kongo state. Dona Beatrice advocated a more thorough Africanization of the church and claimed that through direct contact with heaven she observed the Holy Family to be Kongo. Ultimately found guilty of heresy by both the local nobility and the Church, Dona Beatrice was burned at the stake.

The primary emblem of this movement was Saint Anthony of Padua, a Portuguese-born saint associated with the protection of children and mothers and conceived as the source of Kongo salvation. Depictions of him in ivory, brass, or wood, known as Toni Malau, or Anthony of Good Fortune, became popular in Kongo during the seventeenth century as personal guardians that helped to protect their owners from ill health and other problems.

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Bottom:

Processional cross
Amharic, Ethiopia, Tigray region
16th century
Wood, tin; finial 45.7cm (18")
Rogers Fund, 1999 (1999.103)

This cross was created in the province of Tigray, near the Red Sea, the birthplace of Ethiopia's earliest kingdom and of Christianity in Africa. Works in wood are especially rare within the relatively small corpus of Ethiopian Christian art that predates the seventeenth century. Most processional crosses of that vintage are cast in bronze or silver.

Underlying this exceptional object's aesthetic is a technically accomplished fusion of wood sculpture and metalwork inspired by Byzantine and Islamic design. The highly unusual interplay of materials affords rich tonal contrasts and skillfully integrates the solidity of the carved wooden structure with the intricacy of the inscribed inlays.

In the Ethiopian church the wooden cross is perceived as having been sanctified by Christ's blood, which conferred upon it infinite power to heal and' to bless. Foliate and organic interlace designs, as seen here, visually reinforce this idea of the cross as a life-giving force. Commissioned by Ethiopian royalty, such works were presented to important monasteries to be carried in liturgical processions.

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Opposite page:

Mukudj dance mask
Punu peoples, Gabon
19th century
Wood, pigment, kaolin; 32cm (12.6")
Purchase, Louis V. Bell Fund and The Fred and Rita Richman Foundation
and James Ross Gifts, 2000 (2000.177)

Masks such as this were worn in a stilt dance called mukudj. Its virtuosic male performers towered impressively on stilts while executing complex choreography and astonishing feats of acrobatics.

The creator of a mukudj mask would attempt to capture the likeness of the most beautiful woman in his community, The subject of this particular idealized and stylized portrait was embellished in classic nineteenth-century fashion with a coiffure composed of a central lobe and two lateral tresses and with cicatrization motifs on the forehead and temples. Kaolin taken from riverbeds, which was associated with healing and with a spiritual, ancestral realm of existence, was applied to the surface of the face. By using this material the artist both celebrated the beauty of a mortal woman and transformed her into a transcendent being.

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Left:

Martin Rakotoarimanana, b. 1963
Malagasy Republic
Mantle (Lamba Mpanjakas), detail
1998
Silk; 274cm x 178cm (108" x 70.1")
Purchase, Rogers Fund and William B. Goldstein Gift, 1999 (1999.102)

Situated in the Indian Ocean, Madagascar represents a unique cultural crossroads of African and Indonesian heritage. This brilliantly hued and gorgeously patterned work captures the finest qualities of the island's most distinctive form of expression, the silk textiles that have been produced by Merina highlanders since precolonial times.

Merina weavers use a technique known as akotyfahana, produced on a horizontal, fixed-heddle loom with a continuous weft and warp. A second heddle produces supplementary floating-weft patterns, such as the abstract bird and vegetal motifs in this composition. Dyed silk was purchased from Arab and Indian traders until sericulture was introduced on the island in the early nineteenth century.

The Merina monarchy and nobility wore akotyfahana textiles as lamba, mantles draped on the body in a toga-like fashion. Other important historical contexts for lavish works of this kind were the splendid funerary shrouds placed in royal burials. Their value and prestige were such that they were also given as official presents to visiting ambassadors or sent to foreign heads of state.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, indigenous weaving was almost abandoned as less costly textiles of European manufacture were increasingly imported. A contemporary revival, this extraordinary work was created by the Imerina master Martin Rakotoarimanana.

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Left:

Marionette
Ibibio peoples, Nigeria
20th century
Wood, pigment traces; 59.9cm (23.6")
Purchase, Discovery Communications Inc. Gift and Rogers Fund, 2000
(2000.32a, b)

This finely rendered male Ibibio marionette is relatively naturalistic in form, with rounded muscular contours. To allow control of its movements, the maker would have inserted a rod through the back of the hollow figure.

Objects such as this belonged to a distinctive dramaturgical tradition in southern Nigeria. Ibibio marionette performances were at once a form of popular cultural expression and entertainment and an important vehicle for social commentary. The theatrical presentations for which this sculptural accessory was created would have been highly topical and would have sought to influence social attitudes.

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Right:

Leper mask
Bwa peoples, Burkina Faso
20th century
Wood, pigment; 88.4cm (34.8")
Gift of Thomas G.B. Wheelock, 1997 (1997.444.7)

Bwa plank masks are conceived to embody supernatural forces that act on behalf of the families that commission and use them. Clan elders carefully describe to the artist the patterns and iconography that enhance individual works, These are not merely graphic elements drawn upon for their aesthetic qualities; they are also symbols associated with oral histories taught to young initiates and inscribed upon their bodies. In Bwa culture certain socially marginal personages, such as foreigners, dwarfs, or lepers, are perceived to facilitate contact with the spirit world. Their representation in masquerades may be discerned through the overall performance rather than the mask's iconographic features. Contextual information for this mask was documented by Christopher Roy in the village of Boni in 1983.

Wood masks are linked to all important events in Bwa village life. They appear at events ranging from initiations of young men and women to commemorative funerary ceremonies. The creation of new masks occurs during the dry season and is the occasion for an annual celebration at which they are inaugurated. Performances are organized by individual clans that compete with one another to present the most elaborate and innovative displays.

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ALISA LAGAMMA is Assistant Curator in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She spent 1993 in Gabon and the Republic of the Congo conducting research for her doctorate in African art history and archaeology, which she received from Columbia University in 1995.