A tribute to Roy Sieber: Part 2

When I speak about "the object," I'm talking about style, form, technique, aesthetic, and so forth... [A]nthropology museums....tell the story of a culture and then illustrate it with objects. The art museum tends to focus on the object and to use whatever other information helps to build a bridge of understanding to that object. And this is an old difference which maybe is beginning to disappear, but it still remains a distinction. (Sieber 1993:5)

To develop a fluency in the formal and aesthetic qualities of African arts, Sieber relied on experienced collectors who would share with him their knowledge and preferences in building their own collections. In African Arts interview with Doran Ross, he fondly recalled his sessions with Raymond Wielgus in the late 1950s and 1960s when, in Wielgus's Chicago apartment, the two would look at a group of objects displayed on a shelf and each would argue to get rid of one:

Which one? Why? We would fight and carry on in the most delightful way you can imagine. It sharpened both my sense of aesthetics anti my sense of how to deal with an object. The opposite of that is to do an exhibition. Which do you include and why? What larger point are you making with each piece that goes into it? (Sieber in Ross 1992:43)

The Sieber family recalls how visits to Bloomington in the 1970s by the actor and collector Vincent Price and the

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Left: 3. Face mask, Ibibio peoples, Nigeria. Early mid-20th century. Wood, plant fiber, encrustation; 29.5cm (11.6"). National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Purchased with funds provided by the Smithsonian Collections Acquisition Program, 97-8-1 Sieber liked to focus on "tough" works that might be considered unpleasant or ugly.

Right:4. Shrine figure (okega) Igala peoples, Nigeria. Mid 20th century Wood, plant fiber, iron, kaolin, pigment: 622em (24.5") National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian institution Gift of Orrel Belle Holcombe in memory of Bryce Holcombe, 876 1.

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5. View of the Sieber living room, Bloomington, 1989/90 Photo: Matthew Sieber

British art historian William Fagg afforded additional opportunities for discussing issues of quality, attribution, and provenance. Indeed, throughout his life, Sieber valued his conversations with scholars, dealers and collectors.(7)

He also learned valuable lessons in quality and selection by watching others. in a brochure for an exhibition of central African pottery at the National Museum of African Art, he wrote: "I once watched a woman in Ire, Nigeria, take the better part of an hour to select one pot from a display of fifty or more apparently identical locally made cooking vessels. She tapped, stroked, turned, and visually studied each until she finally chose one that met her practical and, I am sure, her aesthetic standards" (Sieber 1992).

That recollection illustrates Sieber's conviction that "It is necessary to train one's eye. It is necessary to look, look, look....Learn to look, look critically, to read a lot. Look at objects in museums and associate yourself with the object as much as possible, with its origins, with its meaning, and with what it does to you aesthetically" (in Nyden 2000).