South African Art LONDON—The arts of South Africa will be celebrated at the British Museum from October 27, 2016, through February 26, 2017, with a temporary exhibition titled South Africa: The Art of a Nation. For the fi rst time in Great Britain, this event will retrace this nation’s complex 80 and millennia-old history through the presentation of two hundred of its most iconic artworks. Most of these have been in the museum’s collection for some time, but the exhibited pieces will also include more recent acquisitions as well as objects lent by foreign collections. The exhibition will unfold in a chronological format made up of seven sections and will include the works of contemporary artists whose works shed new light on the history of the “Rainbow Nation.” It will open with a display of some of the oldest examples of man’s creative genius, mainly cave paintings, and end with a look at the richness of the country’s twenty-fi rst-century art scene, whose dynamism is born of its constant dialog with both the distant and recent past. The major infl uences brought by contacts with the cultures and traditions of other places beginning in the seventeenth century will be given special attention. The traumatic experience of racial segregation and its transformation into a formal political institution in the middle of the nineteenth century will also be dealt with in depth, and important artworks created in the context of protest against its injustices will be an important part of the show. The exhibition is the brainchild of John Giblin, chief curator of the museum’s African art department; of Chris Spring, curator of the Southern and Eastern African collections and of the contemporary African art collection; and of Laura Snowling. It has benefi ted from the support of Betsy and Jack Ryan, as well as of the IAG Cargo Company, which provided assistance with its logistical aspects. LEFT: Vessel in the form of a bovine. Xhosa, collected in South Africa. Late 19th century. © The Trustees of the British Museum. BELOW: Headdress, fé. Bamum or Bamileke, Cameroon. BOTTOM: King’s belt, yet. Kuba, DR Congo. © Museum Liaunig. MUSEUM NEWS African Beaded Art NEUHAUS—The Liaunig Museum is primarily devoted to contemporary art, but its collection also includes other kinds of material, such as glass objects from 1500 to 1850 and portrait miniatures from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The institution’s eclecticism is also manifested in its choice of temporary exhibitions. The most recent one, African Beaded Art, is on view through October 30, 2016, and features beaded creations produced by a variety of Western and Central African cultures. Nearly 300 works, all from a single private collection, are on display, and the brilliance and vivid colors of the beads with which they are covered create a scintillating panorama. The beauty of these objects illustrates the fascination that the Yoruba, Kuba, and Bamun peoples, among many others, had for these beads, which Portuguese and Dutch merchants initially used as currency for trade in Africa. Beads later underwent a devaluation when they became more common and began to be used to decorate all kinds of objects, such as ceremonial objects, headdresses, fi gures, clothing, and ornaments. The colors and designs of these had meanings that were known to all the members of the community. The corpus of works, which was scientifi cally analyzed by Michael Oehrl, is the subject of a substantial catalog, which also includes contributions by Bettina von Lintig and Peter Liaunig.
T81E
To see the actual publication please follow the link above