Museum for African Art Announces April 2011 Opening

Museum for African Art, looking south along Fifth Avenue .  Rendering by Neoscape.

Source: Art Daily | http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=37617

NEW YORK, NY.- Elsie McCabe Thompson, President, the Museum for African Art, announced that the Museum—one of the country’s premier gateways to the arts and cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora—will reopen to the public in its major new facility in April 2011. Designed by the renowned New York City firm Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, the new building is located at 1280 Fifth Avenue, at East 110th Street, in Manhattan. There it will join “Museum Mile,” linking this prestigious row of museums with Harlem, one of the country’s most important centers of historic and contemporary African-American culture. (The Museum is currently closed to the public, and is operating out of temporary quarters in Queens, New York.)

The Museum for African Art’s new home comprises four floors (one below grade) of a nineteen-story residential tower and encompasses approximately 75,000 square feet of space. With a dramatic increase in public space, the new location will make possible significant growth in the number and scope of exhibitions, public programs, and educational initiatives, enabling the Museum to serve larger audiences than previously possible.

Ms. McCabe Thompson states, “The Museum for African Art is thrilled to be in the final stages of construction before moving into its new home. The Museum is eager to assume its role as both a thriving neighborhood resource—a place where people of all ages and backgrounds can feel a sense of excitement and belonging—and an important national and international destination for art lovers and those interested in the cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora.”

New Facility
Since opening to the public in 1984, the Museum for African Art has operated from three different locations in New York City: on the Upper East Side (1984–92), in the SoHo district (1992–2002), and in Long Island City, Queens (2002 to the present). In 2002, the Museum moved to temporary quarters in Long Island City, Queens, and in late 2005 it closed its gallery space there in order to focus on developing its plans for a new, larger facility that it would own. In the meantime, it continues to present an active roster of major exhibitions and public programs at a diversity of national and international venues.

The new Museum, which faces Central Park to the west, is distinguished on its north and west facades by trapezoidal windows with bronze-finished aluminum mullions that create a dynamic allover pattern. While the Museum thus maintains a distinct identity within the larger structure, the rhythm of its façade carries upward to the residences above.

Visitors will enter the new Museum through a soaring glass atrium. This will lead to a forty-five-foot-high lobby in which curving expanses of African etimoe wood form one of the walls and the ceiling. The lobby, which provides 5,000 square feet of informal exhibition space, will contain the Museum’s ticketing and information services, and will lead to a shop and a restaurant, as well as to a 245-seat theater and a multi-media education center. A grand staircase near the east end of the lobby will lead to the galleries and other public spaces above.

The Museum’s second floor will provide some 15,000 square feet of flexible gallery space. This will typically be configured as three rotating exhibition galleries that may be installed individually or as a group.

The third floor of the Museum will house the library, offices, and a gracious event space with a roof terrace overlooking Central Park. Future plans for this floor include the Mandela Center for Memory and Dialogue, devoted to programs exploring social justice and humanitarian issues.

Space for storage, conservation, and documentation will be located on the below-grade level.

Inaugural Exhibitions
The Museum will inaugurate its new space with three special exhibitions, all of which it has organized or co-organized. El Anatsui: When Last I Wrote to You About Africa is the first career-retrospective of this important contemporary artist. It brings together the full range of Anatsui’s work, from wood trays referring to traditional symbols of the Akan people of Ghana; to early ceramics from the artist’s Broken Pots series of driftwood assemblages and his wooden sculptures carved with a chainsaw; to the luminous metal wall-hangings of recent years that have brought the artist international acclaim. Prior to its presentation at the Museum for African Art, El Anatsui: When Last I Wrote to You About Africa will be on view at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, from October 2, 2010, through January 2, 2011.

Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art examines the intertwined histories of the coiled basket in Africa and the southeastern United States. The exhibition demonstrates how this object—once a simple farm tool used for processing rice—became a work of art and an important symbol of African-American identity. It comprises more than 200 objects, including baskets made in Africa and the American South, African sculptures, paintings from the Charleston Renaissance, historic photography, and new video. Organized by the Museum for African Art with the cooperation of the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston and the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, the exhibition has been on tour in the United States.

In addition to El Anatsui and Grass Roots, the Museum will present New Premises: Three Decades of Exhibitions at the Museum for African Art, which explores the evolution in the Museum’s exhibition program. In the 1990s, following a decade in which it exhibited only traditional African art, the Museum began to show the work of contemporary African artists who worked both within and outside of the continent. Drawn in part from the Museum’s own collection, and including objects from past Museum exhibitions, New Premises suggests commonalities between artworks new and old, canonical and non-canonical, questioning the existence of an impermeable boundary between contemporary and traditional African art.

Also opening in the Museum’s inaugural year is Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria, which, with support from Banco Santander, will conclude its European and U.S. tours at the Museum in late 2011. The exhibition has been co-organized by the Museum for African Art and the Fundación Marcelino Botín, in Santander, Spain, in collaboration with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Devoted to the extraordinary art of Ife, the ancient city-state of the Yoruba people of West Africa (in present-day southwestern Nigeria), it features more than 100 extraordinary bronze, terra-cotta, and stone sculptures, ranging in date from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, many of which have never been on display outside of Nigeria. It is currently on view at the British Museum, London, where it has received great critical acclaim. 

New York | Museum for African Art | Elsie McCabe Thompson |

The Human Equal

Last night I listened to a talk that really inspired me on the Nigerian based Blog - Art Speak Africa - run by the Curator, Bisi Silva.


I heard, for the first time ever, this phrase: "The Human Equal", from a talk given by Chimamanda Adichie, the Nigerian novelist; who was speaking at a conference in October of last year for TED
Words Worth Spreading. You can find the speech on the ArtSpeakAfrican Blog and listen to her strong words on the subject of the Single Story, which I found so interesting and quite brilliant.

Here is the link, for please copy and paste this link to view to the talk.

http://artspeakafrica.blogspot.com/2009/10/chimamanda-adichie-danger-of-single.html#2540115863096586369

I think the ideal of "The Human Equal" is an ideal certainly worth fighting for and if necessary dying for. The way in which Chimamanda spoke at the Conference was truly groundbreaking. With great humour and humanity to all she opened up the flood gates for all those interested in the subject of Africa and the perception of Africans seen inside and outside of the Continent to take their part in building a better and brighter future. She quietly encouraged all those interested in the delicate issues of an extremely complex culturally diverse subject to take their place if they wished but on the understanding that they were sensitive and respectful enough to recognise the enormity of the task ahead. She spoke with great diplomacy of a "Coming of Age" of sorts for the Continent of Africa but more specifically Nigeria. She spoke of the development going on within the Continent itself and stood up to declare that many parts of the Continent of Africa were beginning to successfully culturally develop themselves without the assistance of foreign influences. There are still so many barriers to break down before the gates fully open to the concept of "The Human Equal". So many doors that still need to be opened and kept open.

I was so delighted to hear a woman speak so eloquently on the subject of trying to achieve “the Human Equal”, and delivering a talk with such intelligence and grace. This concept of ‘the Single Story’ opposed to ‘the Balance of Stories’ is a refreshingly sophisticated philosophical approach to modern Nigerian thought. These views are coming for some of the greatest creative minds on earth and there is an obvious sea-change happening in our world as woman such as Chimamanda from Nigeria and Tracey Rose of South Africa and others across the Continent are beginning to address the real issues of contemporary Africa. They are actively attacking and trying to dispel the preconceived ideas of the way in which Africa and Africans have previously been judged; trying to disperse the notion of “the African Exotic” and move ever closer towards the intellectual elite of the rest of the world. Alongside writers such as Chinua Achebe, Sefi Atta, Aminatta Forna, Jack Mapanje and others, Chimamanda is taking on the global mind-set that has been instilled into the black and white middle-classes across the entire world and ambitiously trying to decode the stereotype that artists from the Continent are in some way intellectually inferior to their Western counterparts. I do sincerely hope that this wave of change turns into a full blown Tsunami.

© Joe Pollitt | 2010

The Tail of the Buffalion, Part 5.... :-)

Where shall we take our story today? Maybe to bed or out for a nice hot cup of tea; one healthy lump of sugar and easy on the milk…Where shall we take our story today? Where indeed…we are stuck in a Buffalion. Stuck in a giant Buffalion peering out behind her left eye and seeing a rather strange world so clearly. We have oxygen to breathe from her lungs, we have the power of sight from her huge majestic eyes and we have a cool breeze coming in from her lovely flat nose. We have a heart to play with and ribs to tickle. We have a liver to work with and hopefully drink with and a pair of twin kidneys to filter all our unnecessary poisons. We have two ears to hear and we are listening acutely to what is being said on the outside but on the inside things are looking stranger than ever.

The Buffalion has made her demands and her demands are as clear as mustard. She has asked us only to raw or to grunt, just like she does, if we must. Inside the belly of the beast it is forbidden to speak in English to anybody as only Buffalion is understood or spoken. We are to take classes immediately down in her guts at 12 o’clock sharp, failure to attend will result in brisk expulsion through the Tradesman's entrance.

It seems almost perverse never to speak again. Never to say nothing to no-one, no more. No more words to speak of again. Never again to speak a word to anybody anywhere, what a loss that would be to loose your language overnight. A loss of language is really beastly and I must think on this some more…..I seem to be busy writing myself out of this story...now that will never do..must think on this again and be back in Part 6 because every story should have a point but I just can't find mine here. I'm writing a story without a point, what was the point of that? Maybe that is the point, for God sake please, will somebody point me in the right direction to make a point or have a point at all. Has anybody seen my point? Writer looking for a point to continue writing his story needing some assistance in finding a point to continue writing at all. Do I have a point or not?! :-)

The Tail of the Buffalion, Part 4.... :-)

My world is crazy. Spinning out of control, too much to handle, too much to try and understand, too late mate, madness, silly billy world that I exist in. I am far from alone in my thinking here as I bet you're feeling the same way too! But let us make no sense and nonsense and make sense or some sense of what we are all trying to say. Dear Miss Communication are you reading me? Say something or say nothing...delete me or eat me. Make no sense at all. If you can make sense of nonsense then you can read on McDuff. They read you loud and clear. You think they can’t read? But they can read and they are reading: you are writing. They are watching, watching your making up a story in front of their very eyes. Wide shut yet again seeing nothing but beauty all around me. They are watching...they are watching you writing, writing the story of the century, 'The Tail of the Buffalion'. Let us see what she sees and tell our dear reader what is being seen so violently....

So we make our way to her eyes. She watches us, watching you, watching what we all watch and what we would want to watch when we want to watch it. Watch it, I am losing the plot here. So we are seeing. wWhat aAre we sSeeing Hhere? Ssomething tTotally DdDifferent? I see what she sees but dare not tell you, as the sight is so unspeakable to speak about. I saw fire, and looked for ages into the flames and in the distance I could see a school of Firebacks; rude and carefree, saying something interesting again, those Fireback fiends are great with their long-short hairs with matching coat and tails. Skipping and singing in the midnight glow of the hot Safari Desert. Look, look over there in the coldness; I see a lone Camel-Toad-Tiger fast asleep in the Boobam tree. I see Quirells and Mudpacks, green and blue Mackenzie tartan birds flying overhead. The colours are like an orchestra of sound in full bloom. The sight is almost blinding and yet I see clearer than ever before. I see purple waterfalls and the very rare pink Humpback Rhinos. I see chocolate raindrops on the horizon making their way towards us to be tasted later in the afternoon. I see coffee trees with orange fruits and tea trees with lemon groves and olive branches waving, saving us today. I see kettle fish dancing in the nearby steaming frozen volcanic lake...and a mountain like a policeman's helmet, pointing up to the sky like an enormous unbalanced left breast on a shy and retiring Nanny Goat lying on her back...I see it all so clearly now…to be continued..

The Tail of the Buffalion, Part 3.... :-)

So where have we gone? And where are we going with this merry tale of ours, of the Buffalion and her tail of tales. So we have started again and again from the beginning to the end. It is all about the fingers happily tapping away on the keys. We started again and what we need to do is grab our Buffalion’s attention. How can we possibly survive in the belly of this beast?

There is food a plenty and ample to eat we will never again go hungry. We will feast for years to come inside the belly of this beautiful beast. What happens if we tickle her rids, will she laugh or will she bite? Look we can move, we can now move, move from the stomach to the ribs and start to tickle and tickle her hard to make her smile. To make her laugh out loud. We reach up with our fingertips and start to tickle and tickle away we go. We tickle her rids on the right side then tickle her ribs on the wrong side and she bursts out laughing, laughing to every tickle, we tickle, she chuckles, we tickle some more.

We are running out of oxygen, breathless and hot in the belly of this strange but beautiful beast. We can’t breathe. We need air, oxygen or air. Do you care? Buffalion we need to breathe care for us. Care for us p l e a s e!!

To our surprise she raws, “Jump into my lungs dear boys. Jump into my lungs.” This Buffalion can talk? This Buffalion talks the talk and walks the walk, what can’t this Buffalion do? So we jump into her lungs and take our fill of air, oxygen and air. Do you care? We can breathe again and again once more again.

How do we thank her for giving us air, oxygen and air, do you care?  We must stroke her heart as a thankyou. Thank you for being you. Thank you for being our best Buffalion ever. Give thanks and praise to the Buffalion, give thanks and praise. She feels our praise and winks. Winks on the right side then winks on the left side. The light is broken twice in order for us to know she has felt our thanks and praise.

The views are dark in the belly of the beast. We want to see so much more than the darkness we see all around us. Let us make our way to her eyes. Make way, make way. We are coming to see what you see. To see what the Buffalion sees on a regular basis. What wonderment and beauty does the beast see on a day to day basis, what could she be watching? What could she be seeing from her wide-eyed Buffalion vision? What me thinks….to be continued..

The Tail of the Buffalion Continued...

The Tail of the Buffalion (Part 2...)


All is not lost dear reader for we are now inside the belly of the beast. The Buffalion has gobbled us up and we lie in her belly ready to be reborn, broken and ready to be reawoken and awake to face another day standing. A jigsaw can always be rebuilt. So let us build ourselves up from the ground. Let us build up from the bottom to the top. Let us grow into ourselves once more. Let us feel the way we where when we were whole. Let us grow back into ourselves and piece-by-piece we start to put ourselves together again. Toes meeting feet meeting knees, meeting thighs meeting pelvis. We start again. Start building ourselves up from nothing. From pieces of meat we glue ourselves back together again. Back to the way we were. Back to a time remembered, a happier time forgotten. Back to when we were young, fun and frivolous. Back to a yesterday remembered. Suddenly I feel myself again. My fingers tingling and hands are changing from purple, to blue to red, filling my veins with warm pumping blood once more. The jigsaw is nearly done. A few pieces to go but the picture is being rebuilt inside the belly of the Buffalion. I punch my hand to feel. To feel as I felt before. To have that sense of self once more. The torso is back to the way it was and my chest is still to inflate and my belly is bloating as it did on the other side of the jaws of the Buffalion. I can feel myself again building up like blocks of multicoloured Legoland Meccano sets, I begin to build up and out of nothing I put the pieces back into place to start to live again, to be reborn in the belly. My facial features are in tatters but perfectly workable but visibly revolting as they were before the Buffalion broke me into pieces and chomped me all up and placed me inside the belly of a strange but beautiful beast. Now I am busy building, building myself up to continue this story ……this marvellous jackanory story….to be continued…

Storytime

Enough of the personal life stuff...writing more.

The Tail of the Buffalion (Part 1....)

We are berry-pickers and hunter gathers. Pioneers, engineers and builders. Building blocks of high-rise thoughts with goodness found. Finding nature and answering her call, and out of her mud, cowpats, sticks, sweat and our own piss-to-bind, we build. Doing whatever it takes to build our comfy home. Using all the raw materials Creation has charitably bestowed. Beware my beautiful buck-and-ears for danger lies at the end of every single silhouette. As we walk through the valley of the shadow of life we will surely meet our maker. We will see birds of every colour twittering away azziz their will. Flapping and singing their merry songs as they fly-on-the-wall of the air. Twitting away to all those listening to the sounds they are making. Making their own way, making their sounds and making their noise and being heard, naturally. Feathered flying birds are the world’s natural-born twits. Twittering away tweet, tweet. The sounds of nature are calling and our telephones are all broken. Smashed to smithereens with the ravens in the ravines. The valley has them now. Away: Out of sight of our children. Away: Out of mind of our grow-ups. We have put them all in the valley of the shadow and there they should stay, forever and a day. Pity poor valley for she knows not what she has!

May I lead you into temptation and forgive of you, all your sins as they are forgotten. So forget them and read on. Chinese whispers: sins forgiven and forgotten: Move on, move on. Live another day. Live a better way. Yesterday is behind us and let-us-look forward to-today and to-tomorrow. To gather together; for our thoughts are gathering so silently. The power and the glory have gone. The power and the glory sent us a confused note of their leaving but we need their notes no more. We never need to hear from them again. We need their notes no more for the sun will shine on our coal-like, blue, red and golden skins. As we sweat to rehydrate so we glow in the dark and walk for miles through the darkest of nights. We throb in the distance with electric energy glowing and flowing  all around us to keep heat in and the lights on throughout the darkest hours.

Looking into the distance and she is there. She has always been there lurking in the wings. Ready to pounce at any given moment like a love-in-a-box crackerjack pencil and pen. Invisible to the naked eye she lies flat on the Savannah grasslands and blends in like a massive Grasschopper or a doubled up Sandbeast. She'll give you no warning of her coming, no mention of her presence but the feeling never leaves. It is omnipresent and fills the air with constant dread and fear. The first sight of her will be her jaws as they grab your attention and come in for the kill like a flying Crainsaw seeing her prey busy working on his kitchen table. These are the characteristics of the silent Buffalion. The female Buffalion is far more deadlier than the male. You will smell her very-heavy-breathe. Warm at first, then frightening but strangely sweet to the sniff. Be warned, the aroma is highly addictive when inhaled up the nostrils. Be sure to wear a pair of wooded clothes-pegs when you walk this way. She’ll raw at you to greet you: to meet you and inevitably to eat you. She will smash you with her giant Buffalion paws and blend you into a splattered jigsaw, scattering you piece by piece but don’t be scared and let her dine. Let her feast on the fine figures you pose all laid out on the ground. She is so generous our Buffalion like a Gruffo, Bettleduck, Fireback or a Camel-Toad-Tiger. Generous without fail. So let her eat you all up. You will see her jaws as they open. Your eyes will dilate and magnify in amazement of her razor sharp teeth and fat red sandpapered tongue becomes visible like an angry Killaguerka quietly screaming for bodyparts. Watch with wonderment as she squints and winks as she licks her left front tooth smoothing her molar with her rough disproportionate tongue. See her flat nose spreading as her crane-like jaws unlock. Her coarse fury tongue is moat-like wet as it flops out of her mouth like a slab of meat at the butchers. Her mouth like the Castle gates opens and her drawbridge tongue quickly falls. Chains crunching as it lowers to gobble up the multicoloured jigsaw, piece by piece. The Buffalion snacks with a smile and she snacks with a wink and raised eyebrow whilst combing her hair with her immense ivory claws....