The Menil collection African Galleries Re-Installation
1515 Sul Ross
Houston, Texas 77006
Tel: 713-525-9400
Fax: 713-525-9444
http://www.menil.org/tribal.html
The Menil Collection is a unique museum environment
located in the Montrose-area Museum District housing the collection of John and
Dominique de Menil. The museum building is the centerpiece of a neighborhood
featuring satellite gallery spaces and related cultural institutions set in a
parklike setting.
Mask Yaka Democratic Republic of the
Congo - Antelope Headdress (Ciwara) Bamana Mali
- Kneeling Male Figure Inland Niger Delta, Mali
11th-17th century
 Dogon
Kneeling Woman with Child, 16th–17th centuries
Mali, Bandiagara Escarpment; Dogon people
The Menil Collection
Reopened April 11, 2008
new exhibition: September 26,
2008- January 4, 2009
Through their foundation, dedicated to “the human encounter,” John and
Dominique de Menil acquired more than one thousand African objects from the
1950s onward. As profound humanists, the couple believed that all peoples
struggle with meaning, and that art is a way by which cultures and individuals
seek to better understand themselves and their place in the world.
The artworks in the African collection focus on the human form and so offer
insight into a range of human experiences: a Dogon mother and child figure that
speaks to birth and regeneration, a terra-cotta from the Inland Niger Delta of
Mali depicting a body ravaged by disease, and a Kongo power figure seeking out
the spiritual source of affliction in the world provide but a few examples. From
the perspective of the de Menils’ vision, these objects are evidence of how
African cultures have celebrated existence, related to their surroundings, and
confronted questions of human meaning. These objects, like the de Menils’
collection as a whole, afford spiritual insight to us today.
 Power
figure (Nkisi Nkondi), 19th –20th century
Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, or Angola; Kongo people
The Menil Collection
The re-installation of the African galleries will involve
nearly one hundred objects from the collection, many of which have never
previously been on view at The Menil Collection. (The galleries were originally
installed by Dominique de Menil and her colleagues in 1987, when the museum
opened, and have remained largely intact since that time.) The galleries will be
reconfigured to allow an exploration of the human form in sculpture, ranging
from the miniature to the life-size, abstract to naturalistic, male to female,
and familiar to foreign. It will consider how various African cultures represent
their place in the physical and spiritual world, and how they communicate with
their fellow living beings.
The re-installation and catalogue are generously supported by The Brown
Foundation, Inc., Mr. and Mrs. Peter Hoyt Brown, The Hobby Family Foundation,
and the City of Houston
 LECTURE:
Tuesday September 23, 2008
7:30 p.m.
Constantine Petridis
“Art and Power in the Central African Savannah”
Dr. Constantine Petridis, curator of African art at the Cleveland
Museum of Art, organized this exhibition that draws on the cultures of five
sub-Saharan African peoples. He discusses the show's fifty resonant examples of
carved wooden objects known as power figures, commonly in the shape of humans or
animals.
Constantine Petridis
 Art
and Power in the Central African Savanna September
26, 2008- January 4, 2009
Power figures, once commonly referred to as fetishes, are among the best-known
and most striking examples of religious art in sub-Saharan Africa. Commonly in
the shape of humans and animals, these carved wooden objects were used by a
large number of people in Central Africa's southern savanna as containers for
medicinal substances. They were symbols of status that also acted as mediators
between the human and spirit worlds. While scholars of African art have often
suggested that religious and political sculpture are two distinct classes of
objects, this exhibition demonstrates that such classifications do not hold for
power figures. They are at once political and religious.
Organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art, the exhibition “Art and Power in the
Central African Savanna,” will feature art from four different African
cultures: the Chokwe, the Luluwa, the Songye, and the Luba. In all four
cultures, social, political, and economic changes during the nineteenth century
brought about stylistic changes in power figures. As these chiefdoms' political
structures became more centralized, sculptures acquired new meanings associated
with status, authority, and leadership, all while retaining their spiritual or
magical values. Comparisons will be made between earlier styles, which were
often more abstract and aggressive in their aesthetic, and later ones, which are
more refined and show an attention to detail.
This exhibition will feature a selection of approximately fifty works of the
highest quality from public and private collections in the United States and
Belgium. Curated by Dr. Constantine Petridis, Associate Curator of African Art
at the Cleveland Museum of Art, “Art
and Power in the Central African Savanna,”will be accompanied by a fully
illustrated catalog that will include four scholarly essays, color plates, and
historical field photographs. The exhibition will travel to the de Young Museum
in San Francisco and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
This exhibition is generously supported by Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Gerry III,
in honor of Louisa Stude Sarofim, and by the City of Houston.
you can read more about it at Art
and Power in the Central African Savanna
and also in the archives: Menil-Houston-Texas
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