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Bigham Detroit Institute of Arts: A museum reborn
African treasures: Never-before-seen artifacts are ready to shine
Michael H. Hodges / The Detroit News found at detnews.com
 DIA's
re-created Yoruba shrine from Nigeria includes this ceramic vessel used to
collect rainwater for the Yoruba god of thunder, Shango. (Elizabeth Conley / The
Detroit News )
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Treasures beyond the imagining are coming out of storage. Take the contents
of the crates currently crowding the spanking-new African galleries at the
Detroit Institute of Arts.
"Many of these pieces," says DIA curator of African art, Nii
Quarcoopome, gesturing at dozens of artifacts and half-unpacked boxes,
"have been languishing in the storeroom and never seen the light of
day."
Their languishing days are over. When the museum reopens on Nov. 23 -- it's
been closed for six months to wrap up its six-year renovation and expansion --
even the most dedicated DIA aficionado may be astonished at what he or she has
never or rarely seen before. The African collection is a good case-in-point.
A key example is a 19th-century Yoruba shrine from Nigeria, whose unpacking
and installation Quarcoopome was overseeing, a bit like a worried parent, on a
Friday in late September.
Quarcoopome kneels next to a wooden cage holding seven carved posts, each
about five-feet tall, that will constitute the lion's share of the multi-part
shrine.
The posts are carved with a variety of figures -- here musicians with drums,
there a woman whose impossibly grave eyes could stop you in your tracks.
The posts, Quarcoopome explains, are dedicated to the Yoruba thunder-god,
Shango, and amount to about half of the original 15 on the shrine's façade,
documented -- and more importantly for a curator, photographed -- in 1910 by the
German ethnographer and archaeologist Leo Frobenius.
"When I saw the photograph, I realized I could actually identify our
seven," says Quarcoopome, who grew up in Ghana, and moved to this country
for graduate school.
"So we decided it would be wonderful to try to re-create the
shrine," he says. He adds with tempered pride, "The DIA is the only
museum with this many posts from the same shrine."
The educator in Quarcoopome -- never far beneath the surface -- is at pains
to stress that these carved totems and other religious sculptures were not
themselves the objects of worship, but often constituted a gift of thanks to the
deity for a blessing, like the birth of a child.
The most sacred element in the reassembled shrine is the seated female figure
at its very center. But while worshippers would have prayed in front of her, the
statue wasn't the object of their veneration, Quarcoopome explains, but rather
the religiously charged ground beneath her -- which contained a bundle of plant
and animal matter that anchored Shango's spirit to that place.
The carved Yoruba posts were acquired in 1992 but only briefly exhibited,
Quarcoopome says. They're among the new art objects that will grace the handsome
African galleries, painted in rich reds and reddish-browns.
Others that have never been seen include a recently purchased gold, royal
sword from the Asante Kingdom in southern Ghana, a royal ivory amulet from the
Owo people in Nigeria, and Xhosa beaded wedding costumes for a bride and
bridegroom from South Africa.
"The Xhosa wedding costumes, which we acquired three years ago, are
really going to liven up the gallery," he says. "They are strikingly
beautiful."
Experts nationwide appear to agree that the DIA's African holdings stand near
the very top.
Mary Nooter Roberts, chief curator at the Fowler Museum at UCLA -- itself one
of the continent's premier museums for African art -- says flatly,
"Detroit's African collection ranks among the best in the United States, a
collection of really wonderful breadth and depth."
As a student at the University of Ghana, a professor encouraged Quarcoopome
to consider graduate work in the United States, and he ultimately got his Ph.D.
in art history at UCLA.
Quarcoopome came to Detroit in 2002 from the Newark Museum, following the
departure of Michael Kan, who had built up the lion's share of the DIA's
considerable possessions.
"Nii represents the best of the new generation of scholars," says
DIA director Graham Beal, "who are interested much more in the context of
the whole, the so-called 'new art history,' " in which artifacts are placed
in the context of the historical movements that gave rise to them.
This focus on the broader context lies at the heart of the way the museum has
re-themed its exhibits.
"Also," Beal adds, "Nii's extremely skillful as a seeker of
works of art. As they say in the business, he has a good eye."
This is particularly useful at the DIA, which has an unusually generous
budget for art acquisition -- $3 million a year, funds that are legally
restricted to that purpose.
"We always have dealers contacting us about pieces," Quarcoopome
says. "As a curator, you have to develop very good relations so you get
first crack."
And Detroit has something of a leg-up in that department.
"Many dealers take a lot of pride," he says, "in getting a
piece into a major collection like the DIA."
Quarcoopome, who lives in Detroit with his wife, Martina, and their
17-year-old son, muses on the good fortune that brought him to the 124-year-old
museum at this particular juncture.
"I came to the DIA at a crucial time," he says, "when the
museum had made a decision not only to renovate, but to find a really exciting
new way of presenting art to the public."
The curator with the laughing eyes surveys his domain.
"I could stand in front of these exhibits and talk and talk and drive
you crazy."
You can reach Michael H. Hodges at (313) 222-6021 or mhodges @detnews.com.
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