Africa and African-Americans

I started at the Museum of African Art, a very tasteful underground museum on the D.C. mall, wanting to see a showing of art of the Urhobo tribe of Nigeria. Not surprisingly, the museum was not crowded today, so I got to spend about 45 minutes looking at the four galleries which comprise this recently opened display.

Not that I had any idea who the Urhobos are. In fact, I still don't, and if there is anything I would fault the exhibit on, is that it really did not tell you very much about the Urhobos, at all. There is a study room at the end of the exhibit, in which there is a small book case with a number of books on the Urhobo and a copy of the exhibit catalog, prepared by the Museum of the American Indian in New York in 2002.

From the books, I learned that the Urhobos are one of the tribes found on the Niger River, near where it flows into the Atlantic, and that they were one of the last tribes to be studied by the Europeans, with no real attention paid them until, maybe 1930. That is all I learned. Had I wanted to really learn more, I could have paid more attention to the computer in the study room, which was locked on the website of the Urhobo Historical Society, and which contained a large number of scholarl papers, but no user-friendly information.

Most of what was on display was wood. The only metal was a group of copper bells, which were apparently found where the Urhobo live, but which are not connected otherwise to Urhobo art. That is all they said about the bells.

There were ancestor-totem poles. There were "male aggression" statutes (generally a fierce looking man in a rigid pose, standing within some sort of animal (not really riding it, but more like the man and the animal, and the objects held in the man's hand, were one thing). The male aggression statutes (deemed to give courage and ward off evil) were of all sizes, as were the ancestor or family figures that apparently adorn Urhobo houses. There were statutes of young brides, nursing mothers and old wise women. There was a boat with passengers, making the journey from life to death.

None of these items were dated; I don't know if they were 50 years old, or 500. There were a number of videos showing Urhobo customs (the curator was the director of the videos). They were interesting (welcome dancing, young girls dancing, the celebration of young brides), but it was not clear to me if they were showing contemporary custom, or simply traditional custom.

Interspersed within the exhibit were several contemporary graphics by Bruce Onobrakpeya, an Urhobo artist. They were just fine.

Outside the African Art Museum, still underground in the passageway to the Ripley Center, were 25 black and white photos taken in South Africa in the 1930s by Constance Stuart Larrabee, who apparently now lives in Chestertown, MD. Her 5000 South African photos (taken before she emigrated from there) were donated to the Museum. If these 25 are representative, I would like to see all 5000.

Finally, within the Ripley Center itself, there is a unique exhibit that I want to look at again. 91 (by my count) full size movie posters advertising films with "colored" casts, in an exhibit called "Close Up in Black". They are artistic, varied, and fascinating. I certainly have not seen very many of the movies, and was surprised at the number of older ones and the breadth of their subject matter.

For a change, I caught these exhibits early rather than late. Plenty of time. But hurry.