MUSEUM news EMBODIMENTS San Francisco—African sculptures from a remarkable private collection presently form an impressive display at the de Young Museum. Embodiments: Masterworks of African Figurative Sculpture features 120 figural sculptures representing approximately 110 cultural groups from the collection of Richard H. Scheller installed 54 in a single gallery. The collection is composed of classic and iconic sculptures as well as more unusual examples that challenge commonly held assumptions about African art. These artworks span several centuries and encompass a broad range of styles, from realism to abstraction. In their original contexts, these objects represented ancestors, expressed community values, and served religious and ceremonial purposes. As works of art that were removed from their originating communities and entered the art market, the sculptures in this exhibition express value systems and cultural relationships both inside and outside Africa. The exhibition is on view until July 5, 2015, and is accompanied by an impressive catalog. An interview with the collector was published in this magazine’s winter 2014 edition and a feature about his generous donations to the museum will be included in a future edition. PHOTOGRAPHERS OF THE AMERICAN WEST Santa Ana—The lure of the American West has entranced many over the last two hundred years. While the reality of the region and its complex cultural interactions were layered and specific, the sweeping vista perceived from the outside was the work of artists, first painters and engravers and later photographers. Three of the most celebrated twentieth-century American photographers, Ansel Adams, Edward S. Curtis, and Edward Weston, were particularly influential in defining the sense of the beauty and peril of the West. An upcoming exhibition at the Bowers Museum titled Adams, Curtis, and Weston: Photographers of the American West documents the changing Western landscape they photographed, defined, and, in many cases, created. The show will be on view from May 16– November 29, 2015. (RE)DISCOVERING THE “NEW WORLD” Greenwich, CT—Featuring more than thirty Europeanmade maps and sea charts inspired by New World exploration and published between 1511 and 1757, a new exhibition at the Bruce Museum presents a fascinating study in geographic and human progress, as well as a rare feast for the eyes. The works are drawn from the collection of Jack A. Somer, who observes that “these ancient maps represent Renaissance-period attempts by European ateliers to edify their clientele by revealing our ‘new’ hemisphere and its approaches, as discoveries and claims came ashore from those daring enough to pack their sea bags and head for the unknown.” Works of art as well as documents of unknown worlds, these maps were produced through woodcut or metal-plate engraving, and most are individualized with hand-applied color, since color printing was not yet available. Almost always based in European cities, mapmakers scrambled to gather the latest explorers’ reports so they could draw up-to-date maps and sell them to the wealthy as bound atlases, which, though often fantastical, were greatly coveted at the time as the “latest thing.” (Re)Discovering the “New World”: Maps & Sea Charts from the Age of Exploration will be on view until May 31, 2015. Edward S. Curtis (1868– 1952), The Apache, c. 1907. Bowers Museum, Santa Ana. Below: John Speed (1552– 1629), America (London, 1626). Jack A. Somer Collection. Photo by Paul Mutino, courtesy of the Bruce Museum. Above: Installation view of Embodiments at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Left: Close-up of a Baguirmi figural sculpture from Chad. Right: Maternity figure. Afo, Nigeria. Photos by Kit Coyle.
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