MUSEUM NEWS
50
LEFT: Hook fi gure,
yipwon. Yimar,
Karawari River,
East Sepik,
Papua New Guinea.
20th century or earlier.
Wood. H: 184 cm.
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques
Chirac, inv. 70.2007.41.1.
© Musée du Quai Branly –
Jacques Chirac.
RIGHT: Canoe stern
post (detail). Maori, New
Zealand.
Early 19th century.
Wood, shell. H: 148 cm.
Musée du Quai Branly,
inv. 72.1985.1.2 D.
© Musée du Quai Branly –
Jacques Chirac. Photo Patrick
Gries, Bruno Descoings.
RIGHT: Janiform mask.
Benue River, Nigeria.
Before 1966.
Wood. 67 x 41 cm.
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques
Chirac, inv. 73.1996.1.80 b.
© Musée du Quai Branly –
Jacques Chirac. Photo: Sandrine
Expilly.
BELOW: Anthropomorphic
mask. Songye, DR
Congo. Before 1947.
Wood, pigment. 40 x 25 cm.
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques
Chirac, inv. 71.1947.91.53.
© Musée du Quai Branly –
Jacques Chirac. Photo: Sandrine
Expilly.
Oceania in France
PARIS—Following its historic opening at London’s
Royal Academy of Arts last year, the exhibition Oceania
will be making some voyages of its own. Its fi rst
port of call will be the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques
Chirac, where it will be on view in the Galerie Jardin
March 12–July 7, 2019. Contemporary and antique
artworks will mingle and mix in this installation just
as they did at its British venue. The exhibition places
emphasis on the exchanges, encounters, and hybrid
phenomena that long characterized this vast region of
25,000 islands. These occurred through native interisland
contact as well as that of colonial invaders. This focus
forms the common thread through which the diversity
of the vast region’s art is presented. Quai Branly will also
host an exhibition titled Anting-Anting, on view March
12–May 26, 2019, which explores the meanings of the
eponymous amulets of the Philippines.
Masks of the World
LIÈGE—The mask is perhaps the most coveted of all
non-Western art objects. It exists in myriad forms among
nearly all of the peoples and cultures of Africa, South
America, Oceania, and Asia. They may be relatively
naturalistic, sometimes zoomorphic, others geometric
or abstract, and they come in all shapes and sizes. They
may be used in rites of passage, as ritual tools, emblems
of power, or catalysts for transformation. One conceals
oneself or sometimes discovers oneself with masks. All
of them, from the wooden African masks of the Songye,
Kota, and Punu to the stone examples of Teotihuacan,
have fascinated afi cionados and collectors for many decades,
and it can even be said that many types of African
masks have become the prime representatives of the cultures
they come from.
From March 23–July 20, 2019, the Cité Miroir in Liège
will be presenting the exhibition titled Masks, which has
already been seen in Beijing and Tokyo and is made up of
some eighty examples on loan from the Musée du Quai
Branly – Jacques Chirac.