Detroit Institute of Arts

David W. Penney

Roy Sieber

Helen Shannon

Michael Kan

Mary Nooter Roberts

African Masterworks in the Detroit Institute of Arts showcases eighty-eight of the museum's finest works, representing the full range of major sub-Saharan sculptural traditions during the past three centuries: figures, masks, containers, carved stools, jewelry, and musical instruments. As noted in the introductory material, almost all African art has a functional base - each sculpture's primary justification is its effectiveness as a ritual or utilitarian object. Text accompanying each photograph describes not only the circumstances, when known, of the object's creation, but also the harmonious interplay of its aesthetic features and cultural and spiritual function. The catalogue also details the rituals surrounding the religious objects and the social importance of the secular works. Organized by region, from the western Sudan to southern Africa, the book includes essays on the history of each area, as well as maps and an extensive bibliography. Michael Kan, the curator of the collection, provides a history of the museum's African art acquisitions since 1900, and the introduction by Roy Sieber traces the evolution of Western appreciation for African art, describing also the value placed on the objects by the community from which they arose.

African Masterworks in the Detroit Institute of Arts

Artistic traditions of indigenous North America are explored in a study that draws on the testimonies of oral tradition, Native American history, and North American archaeology, focusing on the artists themselves and their cultural identities. Original.

North American Indian Art

Richard A. Pohrt

Art of the American Indian Frontier examines an incomparable collection of nineteenth-century Native American art from the North American Woodlands, Prairie, and Plains. The collection resulted from the efforts of Milford G. Chandler and Richard A. Pohrt, whose early childhood fascination with the Indian frontier past evolved into a deep and comprehensive interest in Native American ceremonies, beliefs, and art. Though neither was wealthy or enjoyed the sponsorship of a museum, they traveled extensively early in the twentieth century, buying or trading for objects they could not resist. This volume presents the Detroit Institute of Art's Chandler-Pohrt collection with detailed documentation and commentary. Clothing and accessories of porcupine quill and buckskin, woven textiles, bags, beadwork, necklaces, rawhide paintings, smoking pipes, tools, vessels and utensils, pictographs, and visionary paintings are portrayed in 220 stunning color plates. Complementing the illustrations are essays dealing with historical context, ethnographic issues, and the lives and philosophies of the collectors.

The Chandler-Pohrt Collection

Art of the American Indian Frontier

Gerald McMaster

This illustrated companion to the exhibition of the same name opening in August 2013 at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York reveals how the Anishinaabe artists have expressed the deeply rooted spiritual and social dimensions of their relations with the Great Lakes region. Original.

David W. Penney

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