MASK/MASQUERADE Atlanta—To highlight recent gifts and purchases in the High Museum of Art’s growing collection of African art, the museum is currently presenting African Mask/Masquerade: More Than Meets the Eye, an exhibition 56 that brings together works of art from West and Central Africa. On view through September 14, 2014, the installation explores the diversity of creative expression of African masquerade performances through masks, dance costumes, and field photos. It strives to show how costumes, music, song, and dance were integral parts of the masks’ presentation, which served vital communal functions in the communities in which they were used. Some masquerade performances transmitted ancestral wisdom from generation to generation and promoted social harmony by inspiring collaboration and celebrating community achievements. Others used humor to provide social critique while discouraging antisocial behavior. Many masquerades continue today, even within African diaspora communities in Atlanta, having been reinvigorated and adapted to contemporary life. THE PAINTED CITY Los Angeles—Adjacent to the location of the modern metropolis of Mexico City in the Valley of Mexico, the ancient city of Teotihuacan had grown to be the sixthlargest city in the world by AD 500. As the city’s population boomed, sprawling apartment complexes were erected to accommodate a fast-growing middle class. As the largest metropolis in Mesoamerica, the city attracted artists and merchants from across the region and became a place where ideas and technologies were readily traded. While Teotihuacanos developed a pictorial writing system dependent on a shared system of signs, painted ceramics provide one of the most important avenues for understanding Teotihuacan’s visual language and attest to the principal role that painting played in the city’s artistic tradition. The Painted City: Art from Teotihuacan, a concise exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on view from March 29, 2014–December 7, 2014, will draw from the extensive collection of the art of the ancient Americas at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and highlight painted ceramics from Teotihuacan. Fourteen painted tripod vessels demonstrate the range of expression in the culture’s painted pottery. These will be complemented by a vividly colored eighteen-footlong wall mural on loan from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (currently under extensive renovation) that speaks to the city’s prosperity, sophistication, and its distinct urban aesthetic that was deeply rooted in its architecture. Above: Mask. Lwalwa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Late 19th or first half of the 20th century. Wood. H: 27.9 cm. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Fred and Rita Richman Collection, 2004.150. Photo: Peter Harholdt. Left: Water spirit headdress from the central Ijo region of Nigeria in the form of a shark. It is made of paper, lighter to dance than the massive masks made of wood. Photo: Martha G. Anderson, 1992. Below: Water Spirit Headdress. Ijo, Abua, or Ekpeye. Nigeria. 20th century. Wood, paint, mirrors. L: 203.8 cm. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Fred and Rita Richman, 2007.115. Photo: Peter Harholdt. Above: A Dogon child named Atimè, with a kanaga mask he made out of sorghum stalks just before a funeral dance. Tireli, Mali. Photo: Walter van Beek, 1989. MUSEUM news
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