Penn Museum 109 the building as well as of specific installations.17 Starting in 1916, Sheeler also worked at the Modern Gallery, assisting de Zayas with administration but mostly taking photographs of the works on display.18 Until 1923, Sheeler frequently photographed African masks and figures for de Zayas and his clients, and occasionally exhibited the photographs at the Modern Gallery (fig. 19). This connection, as well as Sheeler’s appreciation of African art, could be the reason why Gordon asked Sheeler to arrange an African art exhibition at the Penn Museum in February 1918. Very little documentation exists regarding this important event, which in fact was the first African art exhibition to have been organized at any museum. A letter addressed by Sheeler to collector John Quinn announcing the opening date,19 a short paragraph in The Museum Journal with no mention of Sheeler’s involvement, 20 and several press articles constitute the only remaining traces of this exhibition (fig. 21). While the surviving press clippings do not discuss the installation itself but instead illustrate a lack of understanding and latent racism in Philadelphian audiences,21 the articles at least were filled with illustrations that reveal the central place of Gordon’s acquisitions since 1912 in the display. Since Gordon was aware of new trends in the arts and the changes occurring in the reception of African art, he not only visited the shops of Oldman and Umlauff during a collecting trip to Europe in July of 1919 but also went to Paris to see the two dealers responsible for providing most of the material circulating on the New York art market: Paul Guillaume and Charles Vignier. Like many other European dealers at the time, it appears that Guillaume and Vignier were acquiring African works primarily through colonial channels, from either colonial administrators or commercial ships traveling back and forth to the colonies. Guillaume actively placed advertisements in colonial newspapers, reaching out to the French colonial administrators who might have brought back works they collected in the field. As for Vignier, we know only two of his sources: Paris-based dealer Joseph Brummer, who had sold to him an important group of African works in 1913, just prior to Vignier’s exhibition of his own collection at the Galeries Levesque in Paris;22 and colonial officer Joseph Van den Boogaerde, who procured at least three works that he had collected personally in Eastern Congo between 1913 and 1916 (fig. 20). Most active among the dealers responsible for sending African art to America was certainly Guillaume, who between 1914 and 1918 sent several hundreds of African sculptures as well as works by modern masters to New York. Guillaume worked closely with de Zayas’ Modern FIG. 13: Female figure. Luluwa people, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Wood. H: 24 cm. Field collected by Leo Frobenius in the Congo Free State, c. 1905. Purchased from J. F. G. Umlauff, Hamburg, 1912 (AF 628). Image courtesy of the Penn Museum. Bwanga bwa bwimpe is the name of a Luluwa cult that used to involve a figure in the form of a woman holding a cup filled with white chalk in one hand and sometimes a pounder in the other. Most characteristic are the scarification designs imitated in low relief on the skin. The crusty coating results from application of a mixture of red earth, chalk, and oil. The attention to physical beauty as expressed by such carved figures is captured by the vernacular term bwimpe, denoting physical beauty as a sign of moral integrity. The bwimpe cult was meant to safeguard and foster the fertility of a young mother and the beauty and health of her young child or newborn. C.P. FIG. 14: Basket with lid. Probably Kongo people, Democratic Republic of the Congo or Angola. Plant fibers (dyed and natural rattan and/or raffia), wood or bark, twill plaiting. H: 28 cm. Field collected by Leo Frobenius in the Congo Free State, c. 1905. Purchased from J. F. G. Umlauff, Hamburg, 1912 (AF 1835A). Image courtesy of the Penn Museum. Though few have been exported from Central Africa, seventeenth-century lidded baskets from the Kongo kingdom are among the region’s oldest documented forms of textile arts. With walls and lids made of twill-patterned sides over a solid inner structure of wood or bark, they were produced until the late nineteenth century. Their design and refinement suggest that many, in addition to being utilitarian containers of valued articles, also served as prestige objects for elites and chiefs. It is not impossible, however, that fine cylindrical baskets were also related to local religious beliefs and practices and functioned as holders of ancestral figures, clan relics, and sacred regalia. Their overall shape and intricate surface designs also have symbolic and metaphorical meaning. For more information, see especially Vanessa Drake Moraga. Weaving Abstraction. Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 2011. C.P.
I-IVCoverT68 E_CoverF Vuvi
To see the actual publication please follow the link above