2008 Woodie Awards
op-ed: Misrepresentation of African Art
Students of HARC 0228
Issue date: 12/6/07 Section: Opinions
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The exhibition "Resonance from the Past: African Art from the New Orleans Museum of Art" at the Middlebury Museum of Art set the framework for a course this semester that included students from diverse academic backgrounds ranging from art history to physics. Since the exhibition opened in September, class participants in History of Art and Architecture 228: African Art, Museums and the Politics of Representation have been introduced to African art and had the opportunity to engage in a critical examination of traditional approaches to the study of non-western art. A review of the exhibition in The Middlebury Campus ("Tribal sculpture show shifts African bias," Sept. 19) provoked a stimulating discussion session for the class, which inspired students to contribute this commentary to the newspaper. We seek to contribute our newly informed perspective, incorporating responses of students who have been actively studying both this specific exhibition and the representation of African cultures in general.
The title of the review, "Tribal sculpture show shifts African bias," was a point of contention in our discussion, since many of us felt that this headline in and of itself reflected inherent biases about the nature of the objects featured in the exhibition. As we have discovered in our engagement with western scholarship on this topic, certain words carry with them the cultural baggage of a western mindset and its colonial legacy, the term "tribal" being foremost among them. As one student in our class, a molecular biology and biochemistry major, stated: "The frequent use of the word 'tribe' is distressing to me as this word has certain connotations that are associated with 'primitive' and 'traditional' words that historians have been hesitant to use for years." Moreover, this terminology misrepresents cultures in the exhibition such as the Benin kingdom, a society with a centralized government that created magnificent bronze castings in the lost-wax technique that predated the Italian Renaissance.
The title of the review, "Tribal sculpture show shifts African bias," was a point of contention in our discussion, since many of us felt that this headline in and of itself reflected inherent biases about the nature of the objects featured in the exhibition. As we have discovered in our engagement with western scholarship on this topic, certain words carry with them the cultural baggage of a western mindset and its colonial legacy, the term "tribal" being foremost among them. As one student in our class, a molecular biology and biochemistry major, stated: "The frequent use of the word 'tribe' is distressing to me as this word has certain connotations that are associated with 'primitive' and 'traditional' words that historians have been hesitant to use for years." Moreover, this terminology misrepresents cultures in the exhibition such as the Benin kingdom, a society with a centralized government that created magnificent bronze castings in the lost-wax technique that predated the Italian Renaissance.
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