Magazines - Tribal Art Autumn 2011

By Alisa LaGamma, curator for the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Introduction
From September 19, 2011, through January 29, 2012, a major international loan exhibition that challenges conventional perceptions of African art will be presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Bringing together more than 100 masterpieces drawn from collections in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, and the United States, Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures considers the historical figures who were the point of departure for eight landmark sculptural traditions from West and Central Africa created between the twelfth and early twentieth centuries. While the works assembled have long been recognized for their aesthetic power, this presentation underscores their preciousness as tangible evidence of otherwise largely unchronicled leaders who shaped Africa’s past before colonialism among the Akan of Ghana; the ancient Ife civilization and the Kingdom of Benin of Nigeria; the Bangwa and Kom chiefdoms of the Cameroon Grassfields; the Chokwe of Angola and Zambia; and the Luluwa, Hemba, and Kuba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Harnessing materials ranging from humble clay, ubiquitous wood, precious ivory, and costly metal alloys, sculptors from these centers captured evocative, idealized, and enduring likenesses of subjects whose identities were otherwise relayed through ephemeral oral traditions.