MUSEUM news KOTA At the Pulitzer Arts Foundation 62 SURROUNDING: Installation views of Kota: Digital Excavations in African Art. Courtesy of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis. An unusual and remarkable exhibition is currently at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. Kota: Digital Excavations in African Art, on view until March 19, 2016, presents the fruit of nearly twenty years of research by Frederic Cloth about the highly abstract, metal-covered reliquary guardian fi gures created between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries by the Kota and related peoples of Gabon and the western Congo. Co-curated with Kristina Van Dyke, a specialist in African art and former director of the Pulitzer, this is the fi rst show to focus specifi cally on this remarkable art form. The installation features nearly fi fty Kota reliquary fi gures ranging from acknowledged masterpieces to examples that are frankly a bit odd. While this breadth is unusual for a typical art exhibition, it is central to the focus of this show, which is as much about the process of research as about the art itself, hence its place at the ABOVE: Male side of a janiform reliquary guardian fi gure. 19th century. Ndassa, Republic of Congo. Wood, metal. H: 59.7 cm. Laura and James J. Ross. Photo: John Bigelow Taylor. By Jonathan Fogel
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