2
Some years ago, while researching something else, I came across an old engraving
that shows seven Ogooué and Lower Kongo statues. Looking into its history, I
found that it originally served as the frontispiece of volume two of the 1875 L’Afrique
Equatoriale by the Marquis de Compiègne, which documents the expedition led by
him and Alfred Marche to explore parts of Gabon. They were the fi rst Europeans to
ascend the Ogooué River deep inland as far as its confl uence with the Ivindo River,
and, in doing so, they acquired what is generally agreed to be the fi rst Fang fi gure to
come into Western hands. The story of this expedition and the vector that sculpture
has taken through history in the years since are the subject of an article by yours truly
that appears in the Object History section of this issue. It’s a fascinating story and I
hope you enjoy it.
The Fang sculpture is just one of a number of “fi rsts” that appear between these
covers. Our main feature looks at Carl Wilhelm Öberg, until now largely forgotten as
certainly one of the fi rst Scandinavians—if not the fi rst—to live and work in the Bismarck
Archipelago during the late nineteenth century. The collection of largely New
Ireland art that he assembled during his many years there remains largely intact,
divided between the tiny Hometown Society Museum in Stora Skedvi in rural Sweden and the Världskulturmuseet
in Göteborg. The meticulous research by Thomas Otte Stensager, initiated at the urging of the late Loed van
Bussel, in newspaper and colonial archives and Öberg’s own diaries has brought this story back to life. Our other
feature is the fi rst detailed analysis of the elaborate bone nose ornaments, or otsjes, worn by the Asmat of Eastern
New Guinea. Written by a team of experts, this article challenges existing perceptions about these distinctive
objects of adornment, both in terms of materials and iconography.
The Musée du Quai Branly and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris are combining forces to produce the fi rst-ever
exhibition devoted to noted Parisian art critic, anarchist, gallerist, and art collector Félix Fénéon. Conceived in
three distinct stages, it will also be shown at MoMA in New York. Discussing the show in an interview in this
issue, exhibition co-curator Philippe Peltier mentions that Fénéon’s collection of African art “as art” is thought
to date to as early as 1904, making him one of the fi rst to perceive it in this manner. To put this into perspective,
we know that Pablo Picasso fi rst encountered African art through Henri Matisse at a dinner party in 1906. (You
can read more about that particular story in this column in our spring 2019 issue, in case you missed it.)
The Mundugumor sculpture on our cover represents a different dimension of “fi rst.” While generally referred
to as cult house gable fi nials, Barry Craig (until recently curator of foreign ethnology at the South Australian Museum)
notes in his essay in the new book from which our article in this issue derives that Margaret Mead and Reo
Fortune, the fi rst anthropologists to visit the Biwat language area of the Yuat River from which this sculpture
comes, make no mention of such fi nials from their time there in 1932, though they did observe that there were no
cult houses in this area. However, temporary initiation structures were erected, and such fi gures may have been
associated with these. If they were kept indoors between use in this context, this would explain the characteristic
absence of outdoor weathering on these sculptures as well as the sudden appearance of a considerable number of
them when they fi rst were documented in a famous photo from the 1935 La Korrigane expedition.
Another “fi rst,” and one that is especially signifi cant to us, is the magazine you are now reading. When we
started it twenty-fi ve years ago, we were the fi rst magazine dedicated exclusively to the arts of Africa, Oceania,
and the Americas. After nearly one hundred issues, we’ve barely scratched the surface of this vast and fascinating
fi eld. We sincerely hope you’ll be with us as we continue this intriguing and enlightening journey.
Jonathan Fogel
Our cover shows a detail of a roof ornament
fi gure from the Mundugumor/Biwat people
of the Yuat River in Papua New Guinea,
c. 1900.
Wood, fi ber, shell, pigments. H: 35 cm.
Ex Robert Bleakley, Sydney; Dr. Aaron Vogelnest, Sydney;
Anna and Chris Thorpe, Sydney.
Photo: Hughes Dubois.
Editorial