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50 MUSEUM news AMERICAN INDIAN ART ARRIVES IN CHINA Guangzhou—First Americans: Tribal Art from North America is the first large-scale exhibition about the traditional cultures of North America to be shown in China. Organized by the Bowers Museum of Santa Ana, California, using material drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, the event will be an opportunity for the Chinese public to discover many works representative of North American Indian cultures, including pottery, wicker objects, beaded items, textiles, and sculptures. Some important objects from these cultures will be included, such as a rare Navajo chief’s blanket, a very old Hopi Kachina doll, and a superb bird-shaped Northwest Coast rattle. The exhibition, which has already been seen at the Museo del Oro in Bogota, Colombia, will first be shown at Guangzhou’s Guangdong Museum from July 11–October 19, 2014, and will then be at the Shanxi Museum in December, and the Hunan Museum in April 2015. UPPER RIGHT: Mask. Iñupiaq, northern Arctic. Late 19th century. Wood, pigments. H: 22.2 cm. Bowers Museum, 92.61.4. RIGHT: Anthropomorphic vessel. Casas Grandes, northwestern Mexico. AD 1200–1450. Terracotta, pigments. H: 16.8 cm. Bowers Museum, F74.8.12. UNUSUAL NUDES Geneva—The representation of the naked body is never a neutral act. The symbolic power of the body is realized in poses and signs that need to be analyzed carefully in order to be fully understood. This process of decryption lies at the heart of the Nudités Insolites exhibition at the Musée Barbier- Mueller Museum until November 30, 2014. Using a selection of works from all inhabited continents and stretching in time from prehistory through the twentieth century, the exhibition sheds light on the realization of thought through the revelation of flesh. Ranging from a Cycladic idol to an Easter Island figure to a Cubist sculpture by Henri Laurens, together the objects invite the viewer to question his own way of seeing things, whether embarrassed or mocking, and then to transcend his prejudices. Associated with fertility, power, virility, life, and death, nudity always reveals more than just a body. It is inextricably linked to a group’s psychological structures, its myths, and its taboos. All of these subjects are developed here both with force and subtlety. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog that is like an artist’s book, in which poems by Marcelin Mboko are related to twenty sculptures photographically interpreted by the lenses of Diane Bouchet and Pierre-Alain Ferrazzini. LEFT: Tobacco mortar. Luluwa, DR Congo. 19th–20th century. Wood, metal, beads. H: 12.8 cm. Inv. 1026-181. © Musée Barbier- Mueller—Studio Ferrazzini. BELOW: Male figure, moai miro. Easter Island. 19th century or earlier. Wood, fish bone, obsidian. H: 19.7 cm. Inv. 5701. © Musée Barbier-Mueller— Studio Ferrazzini.


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