Exhibitions Archive - Africa
North African
Enchanting: Bedouin Silver
This exhibition is organized in association with a major exhibition on Egyptian Magic and is based on the book Desert Silver. It features silver jewellery from three private collections, including a display of face veils as ornaments.
16/10/2010 - 13/03/2011
Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, Netherlands
Desert Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography from the Xavier Guerrand-Hermes Collection
Organized by the Museum for African Art, New York, this exhibition features approximately eighty examples of exquisite North African jewelry and nearly thirty original photographs taken in Morocco, Algeria and Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A full color catalogue with essays by Cynthia Becker and Kristyne Loughran accompanies the exhibition.
8/05/2010 - 8/08/2010
Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI, USA
4/09/2010 - 5/12/2010
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Tuareg: People of the Veil
Tuareg: People of the Veil provides a fascinating insight into the culture of the Tuareg people of north west Africa, through the exploration of Tuareg clothing and jewellery. Ornate amulets, veils and slippers are set within their social and historical context to illuminate their significance to Tuareg culture.
27/03/2010 - 27/02/2011
Horniman Museum, London, USA
Portable Treasuries: Silver Jewelry from the Nadler Collection
Collectors Daniel and Serga Nadler have assembled a unique collection of silver jewelry from around the world, including massive neck ornaments, anklets, bracelets, complex earrings, and a wide variety of brooches and fibulae. The exhibition will present approximately 150 works, from North Africa, the Indian Subcontinent, and the hill tribes of Southeast Asia. This marks the inaugural exhibition of the Nadler Collection, which was generously donated as a promised gift to the Museum of Arts and Design. The jewelry is beautifully crafted, and sadly is in diminishing supply; over the years, many works have been melted down for their silver.
16/02/2010 - 8/08/2010
Museum of Arts and Design, New York NY, USA
Passages: Photographs of Africa by Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Presented in large format color photographs, photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher’s images of African ritual practices are vivid, rich, intimate and intense. This dynamic exhibition of images from around the African continent is divided into six themes: Coming of Age, Courtship and Marriage, Beliefs and Worship, Masks and Masquerades, Royalty and Power, and Spirits and Ancestors. The exhibition also includes six documentary videos, plus a selection of jewelry, masks, sculpture, and other African artifacts, drawn from the Bowers Museum’s holdings as well as the photographers’ personal collections, representing the cultures and themes seen in the images.
15/11/2008 - 16/08/2009
Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, Santa Ana, CA, USA
Morocco - Photographs by Elias Harrus and Pauline Prior
The key focus of the exhibition will be photographs from the 1940s and 1950s, when a significant Jewish community lived in the Atlas Mountains and Sahara oases. These evocative photographs reflect the deep links in Morocco between the Jewish and Muslim communities, their religious life, crafts and traditions. Also on display will be objects reflecting Jewish life in Morocco, including costumes and jewellery
11/11/2010 - 6/03/2011
Jewish Museum, London, USA
South African
The Art of Being a Man, Africa, Oceania
The men of Africa and Oceania seldom appear in public unadorned. The jewellery and symbols they wear in everyday life or on the occasion of cult ceremonies constitute a rich palimpsest of layered experiences, not least of the initiation rites that mark the different phases of men's lives. Male jewellery designed for men, but sometimes shared with women, is extremely diverse. The inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific Islands have traditionally derived much of their inspiration from their surroundings, drawing on a huge range of raw materials to fashion artefacts of genuine formal richness, ranging from the strictly minimalist to the overwhelmingly profuse. In Africa, the skin, teeth and claws of leopards, lions and elephants, and in Oceania those of pigs, dogs and sperm whales, together with bird plumage, are greatly sought after for making jewellery that connotes prestige, as they symbolize power and vitality, and offer protection to their wearers. This exhibition will include more than one hundred and fifty exhibits, many of them never before seen in public, from private and public collections.
15/10/2009 – 11/07/2010
Musée Dapper, Paris, France
The power of masks and royal symbols - Beadwork jewellery from Cameroon.
For centuries, glass beads and cowries served as common means of payment in Africa. Embodying the owner's wealth, influence and international connections, objects embroidered with beads or precious glass bead jewellery were, however, a luxury reserved for only the high dignitaries. The exhibition displays objects from the Klaus Paysan collection, collected over 45 years.
13/11/09 – 07/02/10
Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, Germany
Glass Beads of Ghana
Southern Ghana is home to sub-Saharan Africa's most dynamic and enduring glass bead-making tradition. For over 400 years, Ghanaian bead artists have been producing powder-glass beads from recycled glass to meet local demands of fashion and customary practice. Glass Beads of Ghana, the first exhibition to look closely at this distinctive art form, is drawn largely from The Newark Museum's own extensive collection, one of the few such collections in the world.
Until 21/03/2010
Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, USA
Dichotomies in Objects: Contemporary South African Studio Jewelry from the Stellenbosch Area
The Metal Museum and The Society of North American Goldsmiths, in partnership with American curator Lauren Kalman and South African curator Carine Terreblanche, present Dichotomies in Objects, Contemporary South African Studio Jewelry from the Stellenbosch Area. The exhibition will feature approximately 150 pieces of work by eighteen South African artists. The curators have chosen to showcase provocative, experimental and formally engaging works. All of the artists selected are affiliated with Stellenbosch University, the only university in South Africa teaching conceptual approaches to jewelry making.
12/09/2009 – 31/10/2010
The Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus, Ohio, USA
1/07/2010 – 31/07/2010
Velvet da Vinci Gallery, San Francisco CA, USA
21/01/2011 - 3/04/2011
National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, Tennessee, USA