ART on view sets permanent collections by accommodating loans, new acquisitions, and small, focused exhibitions, all the while achieving visual clarity in the display. This renovation gave greater importance to African art in the NMA while strengthening its ties with modern art, the great passion of Roy R. Neuberger. Although now in markedly 106 different cultural contexts, these African works transcend history and place, referencing multiple levels of meaning, the implications and scope of which still remain to be discovered. In this and in the correlation of its African art and modern art collections,31 the Neuberger Museum of Art is an institution for the twenty-first century, a position that we owe to the visionary collectors that were Roy R . Neuberger, Aimee W. Hirshberg, Lawrence Gussman, and Marc and Denyse Ginzberg. NOTES 1. Roy Neuberger, The Passionate Collector, p. 143. 2. Tracy Fitzpatrick, “Introduction,” in When Modern Was Contemporary: The Roy R. Neuberger Collection, Purchase: Neuberger Museum of Art, forthcoming 2014. 3. Among the seven minor objects given by Roy R. Neuberger to the museum are an iron Bambara horse and rider, the first piece he bought from Gallery Kamer in 1962, four heddle pulleys from Gallery Hautbarr in 1967, an akuaba figure, and a chi-wara headdress. 4. The display of African art objects at the NMA underwent several phases, from small exhibitions drawn primarily from the Hirshberg Collection and curated by nonspecialists (1974–1982) followed by a succession of temporary displays (1982–2006) then to a permanent gallery display in 2007. A turning point was in 1986 when Suzanne Delehanty, then director, brought in the art historian and scholar Henry Drewal to curate a major exhibition of African art drawn from gifts and temporary loans. This exhibition established a greater foundation for presenting African art in the museum and one that was reinforced by the major Gussman gift of 153 objects in 1999 that culminated in the 2007 reinstallation of the collection. 5. I would like to thank Ellen Grandsard, who kindly and patiently provided information on her mother’s life and collecting (personal communication, April 12, 2012). 6. Then-curator Dr. Christa Clarke (employed 2000–2002) contributed greatly to increasing the visibility of the museum’s African collection by establishing a small new permanent installation drawn primarily from the Gussman gift, initiating focused exhibitions—traditional and contemporary—and acquiring several objects for the collection. 7. Although the NMA received the great majority of the Gussman Collection, a few pieces were given to the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Before the dispersion of the collection, it was shown in its entirety at the NMA and the NMAA (2001–2002). Christa Clarke curated the exhibition and was the author of the accompanying exhibition catalog: A Personal Journey: Central African Art from the Lawrence Gussman Collection. For additional information on Lawrence Gussman as a collector, see Clarke (2001: 13–14). 8. Clarke (2001: 14). 9. Attribution and stylistic analysis have been provided by Louis Perrois, who attributes both posts to a small population of the Mimongo region of Central Gabon (personal communication, New York, November 11, 2007). 10. A Kissi figure in the Paul and Ruth Tishman Collection FIG. 26: Ceremonial axe, àríngo, dedicated to Ogun. Yoruba, Ekiti/Kwara region, Nigeria. 19th–20th century. Wood, iron. H: 57 cm. Ex Charles Taylor. Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, inv. 2014.01.01. Acquired with funds provided by the African Arts Council of the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Friends of Marc Ginzberg, and the Purchase College Foundation in memory of Marc Ginzberg. Photo: Frédéric Dehaen. might once more indicate the role played by Tishman in Hirshberg’s collecting. It was displayed in the 1966 exhibition of their collection in Paris (Jacqueline Delange, 1967: 31), a time when Aimee Hirshberg was accompanying Tishman to galleries and auctions. 11. Two ekpu figures in a similar style—NMA and one formerly in the Baudouin de Grunne Collection—have been tested through C-14. Each sculpture was tested by a different laboratory, one in Europe and the other in the United States. Although one must be cautious with interpreting graphs, both point to a late eighteenth-/ early nineteenth-century date. 12. The identity of Ateu-Atsa put forward by Pierre Harter (1973: 75) has recently been questioned by Christraud M. Geary when discussing this piece in detail (2011: 12–13). A photograph by Philippe Guimiot of the Hirshberg Bangwa figure in situ was illustrated by Harter (1973: 75) and listed as “unknown collection.” However, thanks to Guimiot, the provenance history of the piece was retraced (see figure caption). 13. Scarifications in the form of rectangles do not appear on two wellknown Metoko sculptures formerly in the former Willy Mestach Collection (see Sotheby’s, 2010, lot 18) and the Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale (see Verswijver, 1996: 221). 14. Constantine Petridis suggests a Mongelima attribution (2013: 22–23). 15. Clarke (2001: 39). 16. Louis Perrois attributed the harp to the Tsogo (2007, personal communication). See Gollnhofer, Otto, Pierre Sallée and Roger Sillans (1975) for an example of a Tsogo harp in the Völkerkunde Museum, Leipzig. The NMA harp is also similar in style to the example in the Ethnographic Museum Neuchatel (Yale Archive Id002378), which is attributed to the Lumbo. Frederic Cloth also suggested a Lumbo attribution, a group that shares some characteristics with the Tsogo. 17. See Delange (1967: 119). The harp is illustrated without a neck. Clarke (2001: 33) observes that the two upper holes in the resonator appear to have been added more recently than others. 18. See Louis Perrois, 1986, fig. 57; Laburthe-Tolra, 1991, ill. p. 62. 19. Personal communication, Louis Perrois, December 3, 2013. 20. Clarke (2001: 142, 157). 21. The Gussman Collection holds the impressive number of seven Fang reliquary guardian figures. See Clarke (2001: 3, 30). 22. LaGamma (2007: 3). 23. Louis Perrois ( 2007) provided the following information: “A note from M. François Chanudet, former curator Musée Lafaille (Museum of Natural History) La Rochelle—whom I knew—indicated that this sculpture belonged to Dr. Pichon’s widow. Dr. Pichon wrote: ‘This sculpture was brought back from the region of Ntem, a river situated in northern Gabon/south Cameroon, in 1916 by Dr. Pichon, who was accompanying a French military mission. ... He was captured by the Germans for a few months in the Ntem region from where he brought back as a souvenir this sculpture.” Dr. Pichon’s widow kept the sculpture until 1970. 24. Petridis (2013: 24). 25. Berns, (2001: 454–455). 26. Geary (2011: 27). 27. Glaze (2008: 5–8). 28. Petridis (2013: 26). 29. Personal communication, Marc Felix, 2007 and 2013. 30. Besides the NMA example, see William Fagg, John Pemberton III, and Bryce Holcombe (1982: 112). 31.Works of contemporary art have been added to both collections, although to a lesser extent for the African collection.
CoverT71_FR.qxd_CoverF Vuvi
To see the actual publication please follow the link above