Beyond Compare
70
Museums invite us to compare objects
all the time. Exhibitions challenge visitors to
consider what makes objects similar or different,
what links them, and what separates them. Ideally,
museums ask us to think about what those distinctions
mean. But the act of comparison itself is seldom
carefully examined.1
Comparing things is, of course, a double-edged
process. In recent years, scholarly discourse has
stressed the darker side of comparison, which creates
hierarchies of value by suggesting that some
things are better or worse than others.2 Such judgments
inevitably raise the specter that comparing is
not only inherently subjective, but it is also shaped
by prejudices. Who decides? By what criteria?3 On
the other hand, comparison has long been—and
remains—a fundamental tool for learning about
ourselves and the world. It enables us to exercise
our curiosity and imagination, and it opens new
horizons and perspectives.
The exhibition Unvergleichlich: Kunst aus Afrika
im Bode-Museum (Beyond Compare: Art from
Africa in the Bode Museum), on view at the Bode
Museum in Berlin through spring of 2019, brings
By Jonathan Fine
together some 150 works from Africa and Europe.
Although many of them are well-known masterpieces,
others—works from both continents—
have not been on view for decades. The exhibition
asks how they can be compared and what themes,
questions, and answers emerge when they are considered
together. The European works are part of
the collection of the Bode Museum, the foremost
museum for European sculpture in Germany’s
capital. The works from Africa come from the extraordinary
collection of Berlin’s Ethnologisches
Museum.
For much of their history the two collections were
seen and presented as entirely separate—and essentially
incomparable—and the museums addressed
fundamentally different questions. The Bode Museum,
a temple of Western art with a churchlike
“basilica” at its core, presented highlights of European
art created since the Roman Empire, with a
particular emphasis on the sculptural traditions of
Renaissance Italy and early modern Germany. The
Ethnologisches Museum was devoted to understanding
so-called “primitive” societies, especially
from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
ART on view
FIG. 1 (top): Installation view
of Unvergleichlich: Kunst aus
Afrika im Bode-Museum.
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / David
von Becker.
FIG. 2 (above): Cover of
the exhibition catalog for
Unvergleichlich: Kunst aus
Afrika im Bode-Museum.
ISBN 978-3-86228-171-8.
© Edition Braus, Berlin 2017.
FIGS. 3 and 4 (facing
page): Installation views of
Unvergleichlich: Kunst aus
Afrika im Bode-Museum.
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / David
von Becker.
Art from Africa
in the Bode Museum