Isabella: Closer Look at the Africa Galleries

Today, I divided my time between working through the article, The Art of Anthropology: Questioning Contemporary Art in Ethnographic Display in the morning researching objects on the Penn Museum's digital collections and familiarizing myself with the objects in the Africa Galleries in the afternoon. I'm actually very happy that I choose to organize my time that way because I found that the things I read in the Geismar article set off little bells in my head as I walked around the galleries and could immediately see the connections.

Admittedly, I found the Geismar article very dense and I want to go back through it again/discuss it with the group because I had trouble following some of the author's points. However, what I understood from the readings was that when contemporary art is incorporated into ethnographic museums, Euro-American ideas of modernism are so tightly linked to what is "contemporary" that they influence contemporary art in a way that negates cultural diversity. Contemporary art is supposed to simply mean "art of the present, but it ultimately carries with it specific Western ideas of abstract forms, universality, and supremacy of institutions like museums. Therefore, even in ethnographic museums that aim to display cultural phenomena from around the world, the inclusion of contemporary art (and in turn, modernist art) has the effect of containing and overriding cultural difference. One interesting intervention that Geismar spoke of (that inspired my own deeper research) was the Jardin d'Amour by Yinka Shonibare in the musee du Quai Branly (an ethnographic museum in Paris). Shonibare created a complex garden maze that creates an experience that evokes strangeness and exoticism for its audience. The piece intends to explore the ways in which images negotiate imperialism and how display is complicit in the construction of race and naturalization of colonialism. It also looks into the ideas, beliefs, and prejudices each audience member brings with them into the museum. This exhibition seemed like a powerful intervention into the ways museum's reinforce imperialist justifications and racial hierarchies (and into the ways we are shaped by these ideas), but because the museum as a whole is designed in a postmodernist fashion, any discussion of cultural values that deviate from Western canon is drowned out. 

Overall, this reading made me question the appropriateness of incorporating contemporary art in the African galleries. Initially, I thought it would be a cool aspect to incorporate and it would showcase the voices/experiences of African artists. However, now I feel the impact of bringing contemporary art into an ethnographic space and I wonder how the Imagine Africa exhibit is already overwhelming the galleries with modernism.

As I walked through the galleries themselves, I was both increasingly frustrated with the current exhibit and excited for the potential of Tukufu's vision. For example, I was particularly interested in the Ga-Sua. Not only was this oracle figure interesting for its intricacy and inclusion of a diverse array of materials, but it contained brass shotgun shell caps that the label referred to as "white man's magic." I feel that the presence of the shell caps could connect well with the burned tusk as they both are physical evidence to European invasion and destruction. I would love to talk to Tukufu about this when I have the chance because I'm sure he has so many ideas regarding the Ga-Sua already.

After I took the time to really focus on each individual object, I was struck by how beautiful so many of the objects were and I tried to envision ways where they could be better seen. One thing that surprised me was how surprisingly colorful some objects were, something I didn't notice before because the drabness of the walls and cases has an effect of dulling the objects' color. I really enjoyed getting to know each object better and I intend on researching their function and meaning in depth on Tuesday.