UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.The questions raised by Sidney Kasfir are of critical importance to the museum field, and the UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX Fowler Museum is in a special position to address them. First of all, the Fowler has always been committed to presenting cultures in dynamic movement and transformation, past and present. Indeed, it is its mission to show that culture is always on the move and that ideas travel fluidly through time and space. During the 1990s the museum became known for landmark exhibition programs that explored not only changing artistic traditions in Africa but their counterpart practices in the African diaspora The African diaspora is the diaspora created by the movements and cultures of Africans and their descendants throughout the world, to places such as the Americas, (including the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America) Europe and Asia. ("Beads, Body, and Soul," "Wrapped in Pride," "Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou'). Likewise, exhibitions on topics such as Ghanaian movie posters and arts of recycling demonstrated the vitality of contemporary artistic production. Fowler exhibitions reflect interdisciplinary scholarship and offer contextualized frameworks for appreciating the intellectual complexity and social, historical, religious, and aesthetic importance of artworks. With this kind of broad mandate, the museum can allow for a range of possibilities and not be bound by any one definition of "contemporary art." Several forthcoming projects in particular will present contemporary arts from Africa in unconventional ways. For example, in February 2003 the Fowler opens a major NEH-sponsored exhibition entitled "A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal" (previewed in this issue, p. 52). It includes contemporary works of art that cut across categories of popular, urban, devotional, tourist, and international. The artists most likely to self-identify as international were happy to be part of this exhibition (knowing that their acrylic paintings and assemblages would be near glass paintings, wall murals, healing devices, and mass-produced images) because they were interested in its overall thematic thread. Our projects tend to be about a larger history and philosophy that has transformed over time and space. Monographic shows on single artists have not figured prominently in our programming, although particular artists have often been featured as part of larger thematic projects (such as the work of Pierrot Barra and Georges Liautaud in "Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou," Bruce Onobrakpeya and Sokari Douglas Camp Sokari Douglas Camp (born 1958 in Nigeria) is an artist who has had exhibitions all over the world and was the receipient of awarded the Henry Moore Bursary award. She is the daughter of Kalabaris, an ethnic group living in the Niger Delta. in "Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta The Niger Delta, the delta of the Niger River in Nigeria, is a densely populated region sometimes called the Oil Rivers because it was once a major producer of palm oil. ," and the artists in "A Saint in the City"). In 1995-96 the Fowler did host the small, focused exhibition on the Kenyan-born artist Magdalene Odundo Magdalene Odundo is a studio potter who was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950. She received her early education in both India and Kenya. She moved to England in 1971 to continue her training in graphic art. ("Ceramic Gestures: New Work by Magdalene Odundo"). The show shared a gallery with a selection of African ceramics from the Fowler's collection, which related her work more to its African legacy and visual meanings than to its fit within a global art scene, where Odundo does often exhibit and sell. Other monographic shows are in discussion, such as one on the South African artist Willie Bester Willie Bester (b. 1956) is a South African sculptor known for his installations made of found objects. Born in the Montagu section of Cape Town, Bester was required to move to a township with his family at the age of ten. and another on Ethiopian artist Adamu Tesfaw Adamu Tesfaw (born about 1930) is an Ethiopian artist. Raised in Bichenu in Gojjam province, Tesfaw was educated as a priest in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In the late 1950s Tesfaw moved to Addis Ababa to pursue painting as a career, ultimately leaving the priesthood. . In terms of collecting, the Fowler is constrained neither by a board of trustees board of trustees Politics The posse of thugs who oversee an institution's administration. See Board of directors. that sets strict parameters for acquisition nor by expectations from the staff or the public for the kind of objects that the museum should acquire. Because of limited acquisition funds, the museum does not make major object purchases, although it does buy art strategically. Its collections are based on the many donations and gifts from patrons in the form of single works and entire collections. Clearly donors have taken their cues from the kinds of exhibitions we have shown and our ability to communicate our priorities and the areas we have identified for growth. A number of gifts and purchases in recent years have included contemporary African art African art, art created by the peoples south of the Sahara. The predominant art forms are masks and figures, which were generally used in religious ceremonies. , and the Fowler's Acquisitions Committee has made a collective decision to accept this material when it is of exceptional artistic merit Artistic merit is an English language term that is used in relation to cultural products when referring to the judgment of their perceived quality or value as works of art. Artistic merit is a crucial term, as pertains to visual art. or when it relates to an ongoing or upcoming project. We do not privilege one category of contemporary art over another but consider each work on its own terms. The modest level of acquisition funds has restricted our ability to consider a more comprehensive collecting policy regarding contemporary production. The fact that the Fowler is neither strictly a fine arts museum nor an anthropology museum gives it considerable flexibility. Our approach to world arts values a contextualized framework not frequently found as a display strategy for museums that emphasize Western modern and contemporary art. They tend to have minimal labeling and little or no exegesis exegesis Scholarly interpretation of religious texts, using linguistic, historical, and other methods. In Judaism and Christianity, it has been used extensively in the study of the Bible. Textual criticism tries to establish the accuracy of biblical texts. from the artists or the curators, as the works and their artists are felt to reflect an aesthetic lingua franca lingua franca (lĭng`gwə frăng`kə), an auxiliary language, generally of a hybrid and partially developed nature, that is employed over an extensive area by people speaking different and mutually unintelligible tongues in order to that can be understood across cultures in diverse cosmopolitan contexts. This approach tends to de-emphasize historical, social, and even artistic specificities. The Fowler favors the exhibition and collection of contemporary works that are grounded in particular cultural milieus or that reflect an imbrication imbrication surgical pleating and folding of tissue to realign organs and provide extra support, e.g. chronically stretched joint capsule. Flo imbrication of local and global. Knowledge about such objects can significantly enrich a visitor's understanding of and access to them. Furthermore, we strive in our exhibitions to challenge conventional wisdom about topics such as tradition and modernity, "art" and visual culture, and global versus local identities. The potential range of themes and geographical areas addressed by Fowler exhibitions-and the pulsing creativity of contemporary Africa--makes it impossible to ascertain exactly what the coming decades will hold. The vitality of contemporary artistic production will always be a priority for the museum, and we will always bring to the works and their makers the sensitivity of presentation and the depth of interpretation that they so justly deserve, precisely so as to avoid the parochialism and the misunderstandings of which Clifford Geertz Clifford James Geertz (August 23 1926, San Francisco – October 30 2006, Philadelphia) was an American anthropologist and served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. spoke. The most important criterion for Fowler acquisitions and exhibitions is that they reflect the dynamics of culture, express ongoing creativity, offer vehicles for exploring issues of critical theoretical importance, and intervene in how visitors rethink the world in which they live. Marla C. Berns, Director Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts, Deputy Director and Chief Curator UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History The Fowler Museum at UCLA or more commonly, The Fowler is a museum on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) which explores art and material culture primarily from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas, past and present. |
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