Past Exhibitions

African Forms

30 January–14 March 2003

Africa is the second largest continent, with four times the land mass of Europe and a population greater than either of the Americas, but we in the United States know precious little about its material cultures. In conjunction with Black History Month, the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum offers an important learning opportunity with African Forms, a major exhibition of African objects organized by New York’s innovative Museum for African Art.

Featuring a breathtaking display of more than 400 handcrafted objects from the entire African continent, African Forms is the first-ever exhibition to examine such a broad stylistic and geographic range. It celebrates the artistic practices of numerous African peoples who work in gold and other metals, wood, ivory, bone, ceramics, glass, leather, and textiles. In a setting that allows exploration of ways in which utilitarian objects help define different African cultures and traditions, visitors will see skillfully crafted furniture, jewelry, receptacles such as bowls, snuff bottles and pipes, musical instruments from trumpets to zithers, devotional objects, intricately designed textiles, ornately decorated symbols of power and rank, and more.

In developing African Forms, curator Frank Herreman worked closely with collector Marc Ginzberg, one of the founders of the groundbreaking Museum for African Art. They chose objects, all distinguished by their beauty and innovation of form, that expand viewers’ appreciation of African art beyond figurative sculptures and masks. In the lavishly illustrated catalogue that accompanies the exhibition, Ginzberg writes that the selected objects "might lead to a sharper perception or an enhanced insight" of African material cultures.

Drawn primarily from the vast holdings of Ginzberg and his wife Denyse, the show also includes objects from the collection of Gilbert and Roda Graham. Following an exhibition of the Grahams’ African textiles at Mount Holyoke in 1997, some objects from their collection were presented to the museums at Smith, Mount Holyoke and Amherst colleges. Several are featured in African Forms and, more importantly, will remain in the permanent collections after the exhibition closes.

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