MUSEUM news ART OF THE AUSTRONESIANS Los Angeles—This spring and summer, will present a new and important exhibition titled Art of the Austronesians: Voyaging. It explores the history and evolution of the arts and cultures of the Austronesian peoples from their prehistoric origins in Taiwan to successive migrations over millennia throughout the Philippines, Indonesia, the Pacifi c, and beyond. This will be the fi rst major exhibition in the United States to comparatively examine the visual arts of the entire Austronesian world in a single project. Recent projects at other institutions have brought renewed attention to long-neglected Pacifi c arts but have not specifi cally examined the material with regard to its common Austronesian heritage. The exhibition will feature approximately 200 works of art, including a number of important pieces from the Fowler’s Wellcome Collection, the signifi - cance of which has never been highlighted in previous a wide-ranging selection drawn from its extensive Austronesian holdings in over thirty years. Additional works will be borrowed from private collections. Art 46 the Fowler Museum at UCLA The Legacy of Indo-Pacifi c projects. The Fowler Museum has not exhibited ABOVE: Ossuary. Western Barito, Melawi River, West Kalimantan (Borneo), Indonesia. 1940s. Wood, pigment. H: 217 cm. Fowler Museum at UCLA, X94.3.1A-J; Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Leon Wallace. of the Austronesians is organized by Roy W. Hamilton, the Fowler Museum’s Senior Curator of Asian & Pacifi c Collections, and will be on view April 24 through August 14, 2016. It will be the subject of an article in this magazine’s summer 2016 edition. In other news at the Fowler, the museum was recently the benefi ciary of a recent donation that expands its Southeast Asian collection. Barry and Jill Kitnick formed this important collection of shamanic paraphernalia consisting of more than 300 rare painted scrolls, garments, scepters, masks, musical instruments, and a variety of other items originating from the Yao, Tày, Nùng, Sán Chay, and Sán Dìu peoples from northern Vietnam and the adjacent Chinese borderlands. The shamanist religious practices of these peoples draw much of their imagery from the Daoist canon but also show the infl uence of Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism. Plans are underway to prepare the collection for an exhibition at the Fowler in 2018–2019. ABOVE: Ossuary. Western Barito, Melawi River, West Kalimantan (Borneo), Indonesia. 1940s. Wood, pigment. H: 217 cm. Fowler Museum at UCLA, X94.3.1A-J; gift of Dr. and Mrs. Leon Wallace. LEFT: Boat-shaped grave marker. Sulu Islands, Philippines. Probably 19th– early 20th century. Wood. H: 119 cm. Fowler Museum at UCLA, X80.1141a,b; gift of Mr. Eli Ballan. BELOW: Asafo fl ag. Fante, Ghana. C. 1900–1950. Cotton. Collection of the Mingei International Museum, inv. 2014.11.14; gift of Barb Rich. Photo: Will Chandler. ASAFO FLAGS San Diego—Thirty-seven fl ags from the West African country of Ghana make up an exhibition currently at the Mingei International Museum. A recent donation to Mingei International, these colorful fl ags date from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and feature graphic imagery and appliquéd designs on solidcolor grounds. They were commissioned by military organizations known as asafo, or “companies,” whose primary role was to exert power, exercise political infl uence, and maintain codes of conduct within Fante communities. Smaller towns had at least one company and larger ones up to fourteen. Verbal proverbs are given imaginative visual form in the imagery of the fl ags, in which messages and customs are remembered and oral traditions are preserved. Colonial infl uence also can be seen in the iconography of these fl ags, derived in part from the display of European fl ags in the region. Indeed, the British Union Jack appears on the majority of fl ags created before Ghana gained its independence in 1957. An ongoing tradition, Asafo fl ags are displayed at funerals, annual festivals, and other ceremonial occasions, where they adorn central shrines and are paraded and waved through villages and towns. Intense rivalry among companies once led to violent confrontations, but today this is channeled into peaceful competitions. Asafo Flags from Ghana is on view until July 10, 2016, and was curated by Christine Hietbrink.
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