Happenings

Presenting African and Oceanic artifacts side by side with twentieth-century photographs, this exhibition examines the interrelation between the histories of these objects, the photographic eye, and the practice of collecting. Originally created as sacred or utilitarian items––and oftentimes both––the identities of many extra-European objects were lost, distorted, or reimagined over time by the Westerners who collected and depicted them. Object, Image, Collector explores this process and the dramatic recasting of artifacts as art, presenting tribal works from twenty-one private Boston collections and photographs from Charles Sheeler, Walker Evans, and others.