Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts
1959–2018 THE FIELD OF AFRICAN ART lost a
major scholar with the passing of Mary
Nooter Roberts in September of 2018.
She managed to pack remarkable life experiences
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and accomplishments into her
fi fty-eight years. Dr. Roberts, most often
known as “Polly,” worked doggedly to
bring a deeper understanding of the art
of Africa to wider audiences through
her teaching, most recently as Professor of World Arts and
Cultures at UCLA, her many publications (often working
jointly with her husband, Dr. Allen F. Roberts), and her
museum work at multiple institutions.
She had an early introduction to Africa, living in Liberia
with her parents. Her father, Robert, worked for the Foreign
Service and later the World Bank in different parts of
Africa, and her mother, Nancy Ingram Nooter, was an anthropologist
and visual artist. Both parents became active
collectors of African art and continue to reside in Washington,
D.C.
Polly studied at Scripps College, majoring in philosophy
and French literature, but began graduate studies in art history
at Columbia University after visiting her parents in
Tanzania. She completed her doctorate in 1991, spending
two years of extensive dissertation fi eld research among
the Luba people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
During that time, she underwent a rigorous Luba initiation,
working in consultation with a woman diviner to access
deeper levels of traditional knowledge. Later, she also conducted
fi eld research in Senegal, focusing on the arts of a
local Sufi movement.
While at Columbia, Polly met her husband, Allen, as
well as Susan Vogel, who later hired her to be the fi rst staff
member at the nascent Museum for African Art. Her fi rst
major exhibition, Secrecy: African Art That Conceals and
Reveals, was mounted in 1993. A second groundbreaking
exhibition there, Memory: Luba Art and the Making of
History, was a collaboration with her husband in 1996.
In 1999, Polly and Al moved to Los
Angeles, where she became chief curator
of the Fowler Museum at UCLA and was
later appointed deputy director. At the
Fowler, she was curator of many exhibition
projects, most notably, A Saint in the
City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (2003)
as well as Continental Rifts: Contemporary
Time-Based Works of Africa (2009)
and Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in
African Art (2007–08).
Polly began a long association with the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2008, curating the
exhibition, Tradition as Innovation in African Art. She
was hired as a consulting curator at LACMA in 2011 and
launched a permanent program for African art there with
the remarkable exhibition Shaping Power: Luba Masterworks
from the Royal Museum for Central Africa in 2013.
After having brought the Smithsonian exhibition African
Cosmos: Stellar Arts to Los Angeles in 2014, she collaborated
on Senses of Time: Video and Film-Based Works of
Africa (2015–17). Last year, Polly orchestrated the serenely
beautiful exhibition The Inner Eye: Vision and Transcendence
in African Arts, a look at how visual engagement can
enable transitions between different stages of and interactions
with spirit worlds. Polly also had dramatic impact on
building an African art collection at LACMA, adding signifi
cant works to the collection including a major Ijo forest
spirit and an important mother-and-child fi gure from the
Gwan Association of Mali, one of the oldest documented
wooden sculptures from sub-Saharan Africa.
During her lifetime, Polly was awarded many of the
highest accolades of her fi eld. In 2007, she was decorated
as a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Republic
of France for her promotion of Francophone cultures
and arts. In 2017, she was recognized with the lifetime
Leadership Award of the Arts Council of the African Studies
Association, the most signifi cant academic accomplish-
IN TRIBUTE