MUSEUM news
Le Havre–Dakar:
Sharing the Memory
LE HAVRE—An exhibition devoted to the substantial
Senegalese and Franco-Senegalese community of Le
Havre is seeking to highlight and give voice to African art
objects. Held at the Muséum du Havre, the event is the
fruit of collaboration between two Senegalese museums:
the Musée Théodore Monod and the Musée des Civilisations
58
Noires. The show was conceived of as a “laboratory”
for the latter museum, which will open in Dakar in
2018. It strives to show the wealth, the age, and the deep
meaning of the traditional arts of West Africa while also
presenting them alongside contemporary creations. The
installation is divided into four sections: patrimony, contemporary,
animals, and stories—the latter relating to the
immaterial patrimony of youth. Masks,
ornaments, furniture, and musical instruments
will be featured, along with
other exceptional objects. Le Havre—
Sharing the Memory will be on view
until December 31, 2017.
Ivorian Highlights of the Musée
d’Angoulême’s Collection
ANGOULÊME—In a parallel event to Angoulême’s
Francophone Film Festival, which this year focuses
on Côte d’Ivoire, the Musée d’Angoulême is exhibiting
some thirty Ivorian objects drawn from its storage
alongside those it shows in its permanent installation.
These objects, which include masks, fi gures, bowls,
spoons, doors, and stools, derive from many peoples,
including the Senufo, the Baule, the Dan, the Guere,
the Wobe, the We, and the Guerze. Together they form
a poetic and eclectic presentation of the wealth and
refi nement of the Ivorian cultural patrimony. Florilège
Ivoirien des Collections du Musée d’angoulême is on
view until September 10, 2017.
LEFT: Standing fi gure.
Kingdom of Benin.
17th–18th century.
Copper alloy.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches
Museum.
© SMB, Ethnologisches Museum. Photo:
Martin Franken.
BELOW: Donatello (1386–1466),
Putto with tambourin, 1429. Italy.
Gilt bronze.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Skulpturensammlung und Museum für
Byzantinische Kunst.
© SMB, Skulpturensammlung und Museum für
Byzantinische Kunst. Photo: Jörg P. Anders.
BELOW: Figurative scale
weights. Akan, Côte d’Ivoire.
Musée d’Angoulême.
Beyond Compare:
African Art at the Bode Museum
BERLIN—Beginning on October 27, 2017, the Bode Museum
will present a “conversation between continents”
with an exhibition that features more than seventy African
sculptures from the collection of the Berlin Museum
of Ethnology. Beyond Compare sets up a dialog between
objects from Central and West Africa and masterpieces
from Byzantium, Italy, and central Europe. The exhibition
intends to create new interactions that highlight
unexpected similarities as well as differences between
artworks from unrelated traditions. More than thirty juxtapositions
illustrate major themes in human existence
such as power, death, beauty, memory, aesthetics, and
identity. On view through spring 2019, this show goes
beyond the mere comparison of sculptural traditions to
open interesting new perspectives.
BOTTOM LEFT: Omar
Victor Diop. Thiaroye, 1944.
Liberty series, 2016.
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper,
120 x 163 cm.
Courtesy of Galerie MAGNIN-A, Paris.
LEFT: Récade representing a python swallowing its
own tail, an emblem of King Ghézo (1818–1858).
Fon, Abomey, Benin. 20th century.
Muséum d’histoire naturelle, Le Havre, Thierry donation, 2008.