Alisa LaGamma

John Pemberton

In many African societies, individuals rely on the wisdom and counsel of professional diviners to advise them about decisions that affect their future. While a vast array of approaches to divination--the way in which spiritual entities are consulted--are practiced in Africa, specialists are invariably trained to master complex bodies of knowledge, and to act as mediators with a spiritual ancestral realm. Many of the distinctive art forms featured in this exhibition were implements used by diviners to facilitate inquiries into their clients' problems. Others were originally prescribed by diviners to their clients as a means of enhancing their well being, alleviating certain chronic problems, or providing personal protection. Whatever their role in the divination process, the aesthetic power of the works considered profoundly enhanced lived experience.Works featured in the exhibition range from representations that relate to the intimate needs of individual patrons to those that reflect the collective concerns of an entire community. These take the form of cast brass, miniature protective items of personal adornment created in Burkina Faso, and a monumental, morally authoritative N'kisi Nkondi power figure from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Works from the Metropolitan's collection include a pair of figures created for a Baule diviner from Côte d'Ivoire, a janus figure designed to safeguard a Fon household in the Republic of Benin, and a kneeling female devotee depicted as a caryatid whose upraised arms support an ivory Ifa diviner's vessel from the Yoruba center of Owo.

African Art and Rituals of Divination

Art and Oracle

The seventy-five masterpieces presented here, drawn from public and private American collections, are among the most celebrated icons of African art, works that are superb artistic creations as well as expressions of a society's most profound conceptions about its beginnings. All are reproduced in color and are accompanied by entries that illuminate the distinctive cultural contexts that inspired their creation and informed their appreciation."--BOOK JACKET.

Ideas of Origin in African Sculpture

Genesis

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

Twenty-eight African cultures are represented here by artifacts created to communicate with ancestors, spirits, and gods, about such issues as health, conception, and determination of guilt or innocence. Issued in conjunction with an April-July 2000 exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, this catalog contains extensive ethnographic, descriptive, and interpretive text in connection with each of 50 pictured pieces, as well as a 13-page essay about divination in Sub-Saharan Africa (by John Pemberton III) and an introductory essay by LaGamma. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Clare Davies

Perrin Stein

Karen Van Godtsenhoven

Sheena Wagstaff

Jeff L. Rosenheim

Wolfram Koeppe

Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser

Mia Fineman

Jessica Regan

John T. Carpenter

Donald J. La Rocca

Iria Candela

Maryam Ekhtiar

Stuart W. Pyhrr

Monika Bincsik

Stephanie D'Alessandro

Henry Colburn

Deniz Beyazit

Jayson Kerr Dobney

Ian Alteveer

Sylvia Yount

Kelly Baum

Medill Higgins Harvey

John Byck

Yaëlle Biro

Maia Nuku

Femke Speelberg

Brinda Kumar

Kim Benzel

Ashley Dunn

Douglas S. Eklund

Alyce Perry Englund

Jennifer Farrell

Amanda B. Garfinkel

Alison Hokanson

Mellissa J. Huber

Shanay Jhaveri

Ronda Kasl

Constance McPhee

Asher E. Miller

Elyse Nelson

Stephen C. Pinson

Adrienne Spinozzi

Courtney A. Stewart

E. Bradley Strauchen-Scherer

The second volume in a special two-part edition of Recent Acquisitions, this Bulletin celebrates works acquired by the Museum in 2019 and 2020, many of which were gifts bestowed in honor of the Museum’s 150th anniversary year. Highlights of this volume include Jean-Baptise Carpeaux’s astonishing portrayal of an African woman in the marble sculpture Why Born Enslaved!, a monumental storage jar by African American potter and poet David Drake, an exquisite lacquer mirror case depicting an 1838 meeting between the crown prince of Iran and the tsar of Russia, and Carmen Herrera’s abstract work dating to 1949, Iberic. This publication also honors the many generous contributions from donors that make possible the continued growth of The Met's collection.

Recent Acquisitions: A Selection: 2018–20: Part II: Late Eighteenth Century to Contemporary

Andrew Solomon

Keith Christiansen

Barbara Drake Boehm

Denise Murrell

Adam Eaker

Shanay Javeri

James Moske

Andrea Myers Achi

Keith Prewitt

This special issue of the Bulletin reflects on some of the crises gripping our world in the present moment, including the catastrophic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the continuing tragedy of racial injustice. Voices from The Metropolitan Museum of Art present their personal perspectives on issues and challenges facing us all while connecting these difficult times to art, artists, and the Museum’s history. Conceived and written during the Museum’s unprecedented closure, this compelling publication reflects on art’s power to inspire, comfort, and heal.

A Time of Crisis

David C. Conrad

Souleymane Bachir Diagne

Mamadou Cissé

Roderick McIntosh

Paulo F. de Moraes Farias

Giulia Paoletti

Ibrahima Thiaw

This groundbreaking volume examines the extraordinary artistic and cultural traditions of the African region known as the western Sahel, a vast area on the southern edge of the Sahara desert that includes present-day Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger. This is the first book to present a comprehensive overview of the diverse cultural achievements and traditions of the region, spanning more than 1,300 years from the pre Islamic period through the nineteenth century. It features some of the earliest extant art from sub Saharan Africa as well as such iconic works as sculptures by the Dogon and Bamana peoples of Mali. Essays by leading international scholars discuss the art, architecture, archaeology, literature, philosophy, religion, and history of the Sahel, exploring the unique cultural landscape in which these ancient communities flourished. Richly illustrated and brilliantly argued, Sahel brings to life the enduring forms of expression created by the peoples who lived in this diverse crossroads of the world.

Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara

A fascinating account of the effects of turbulent history on one of Africa’s most storied kingdoms, Kongo: Power and Majesty presents over 170 works of art from the Kingdom of Kongo (an area that includes present-day Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola). The book covers 400 years of Kongolese culture, from the fifteenth century, when Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian merchants and missionaries brought Christianity to the region, to the nineteenth, when engagement with Europe had turned to colonial incursion and the kingdom dissolved under the pressures of displacement, civil war, and the devastation of the slave trade. The works of art—which range from depictions of European iconography rendered in powerful, indigenous forms to fearsome minkondi, or power figures—serve as an assertion of enduring majesty in the face of upheaval, and richly illustrate the book’s powerful thesis.

Kongo: Power and Majesty

Alisa LaGamma

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