UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History

African Arts, Winter, 2002 by Marla C. Berns

The questions raised by Sidney Kasfir are of critical importance to the museum field, and the UCLA Fowler Museum is in a special position to address them. First of all, the Fowler has always been committed to presenting cultures in dynamic movement and transformation, past and present. Indeed, it is its mission to show that culture is always on the move and that ideas travel fluidly through time and space. During the 1990s the museum became known for landmark exhibition programs that explored not only changing artistic traditions in Africa but their counterpart practices in the African diaspora ("Beads, Body, and Soul," "Wrapped in Pride," "Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou'). Likewise, exhibitions on topics such as Ghanaian movie posters and arts of recycling demonstrated the vitality of contemporary artistic production.

Fowler exhibitions reflect interdisciplinary scholarship and offer contextualized frameworks for appreciating the intellectual complexity and social, historical, religious, and aesthetic importance of artworks. With this kind of broad mandate, the museum can allow for a range of possibilities and not be bound by any one definition of "contemporary art." Several forthcoming projects in particular will present contemporary arts from Africa in unconventional ways. For example, in February 2003 the Fowler opens a major NEH-sponsored exhibition entitled "A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal" (previewed in this issue, p. 52). It includes contemporary works of art that cut across categories of popular, urban, devotional, tourist, and international. The artists most likely to self-identify as international were happy to be part of this exhibition (knowing that their acrylic paintings and assemblages would be near glass paintings, wall murals, healing devices, and mass-produced images) because they were interested in its overall thematic thread.

Our projects tend to be about a larger history and philosophy that has transformed over time and space. Monographic shows on single artists have not figured prominently in our programming, although particular artists have often been featured as part of larger thematic projects (such as the work of Pierrot Barra and Georges Liautaud in "Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou," Bruce Onobrakpeya and Sokari Douglas Camp in "Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta," and the artists in "A Saint in the City"). In 1995-96 the Fowler did host the small, focused exhibition on the Kenyan-born artist Magdalene Odundo ("Ceramic Gestures: New Work by Magdalene Odundo"). The show shared a gallery with a selection of African ceramics from the Fowler's collection, which related her work more to its African legacy and visual meanings than to its fit within a global art scene, where Odundo does often exhibit and sell. Other monographic shows are in discussion, such as one on the South African artist Willie Bester and another on Ethiopian artist Adamu Tesfaw.

In terms of collecting, the Fowler is constrained neither by a board of trustees that sets strict parameters for acquisition nor by expectations from the staff or the public for the kind of objects that the museum should acquire. Because of limited acquisition funds, the museum does not make major object purchases, although it does buy art strategically. Its collections are based on the many donations and gifts from patrons in the form of single works and entire collections. Clearly donors have taken their cues from the kinds of exhibitions we have shown and our ability to communicate our priorities and the areas we have identified for growth. A number of gifts and purchases in recent years have included contemporary African art, and the Fowler's Acquisitions Committee has made a collective decision to accept this material when it is of exceptional artistic merit or when it relates to an ongoing or upcoming project. We do not privilege one category of contemporary art over another but consider each work on its own terms. The modest level of acquisition funds has restricted our ability to consider a more comprehensive collecting policy regarding contemporary production.

The fact that the Fowler is neither strictly a fine arts museum nor an anthropology museum gives it considerable flexibility. Our approach to world arts values a contextualized framework not frequently found as a display strategy for museums that emphasize Western modern and contemporary art. They tend to have minimal labeling and little or no exegesis from the artists or the curators, as the works and their artists are felt to reflect an aesthetic lingua franca that can be understood across cultures in diverse cosmopolitan contexts. This approach tends to de-emphasize historical, social, and even artistic specificities.

The Fowler favors the exhibition and collection of contemporary works that are grounded in particular cultural milieus or that reflect an imbrication of local and global. Knowledge about such objects can significantly enrich a visitor's understanding of and access to them. Furthermore, we strive in our exhibitions to challenge conventional wisdom about topics such as tradition and modernity, "art" and visual culture, and global versus local identities.