This is the first of three postings under the theme of Uses of the Dogon. As I have explained below (Post 1), that is the title I have given to the book I am currently writing on the way in which the Dogon people have been represented in different kinds of discourse (anthropological, art historical and tourist) in the West. What I want to use this strand of the blog for, therefore, is to comment on things that I am reading and visits that I am making that have a loss relationship to the book, but may not actually be included within the text itself.
The week before last I visited Liverpool World Museum with my partner to look at the Africa gallery and to see the Dogon items that are held by the Museum. Last week I attended a conference at Durham, organised by the Sociology of Religion section of the British Sociological Association, on the theme of Material Religion. These three postings, by way of catching up with myself, will pick up themes that come from these two experiences.
So, back to Liverpool, I must begin by offering my thanks to Zachary Kingdon, the curator of the Africa Collection at Liverpool for giving his time to show us around the gallery and taking us out to the store to see the other Dogon items. Liverpool has a small collection of Dogon pieces, all acquired during the 1960s when the then curator used money given to the museum to rebuild its collection after damage during the war, to buy a number of objects on the open market to, in many ways, ‘complete the collection’. The Dogon items, however, did not ‘complete the collection’ and, I assume the same was true of many of the other items bought at this time. This was because the ‘collection’ as it had developed in Liverpool really never should have contained Dogon items in the first place. It was a collection largely put together by a Liverpool merchant, Arnold Ridyard, who travelled the coast of West Africa from Sierra Leone to Angola accepting donations from, and making purchases from, local Africans in the different countries visited. It is only by some abstract notion of ‘African Art’ that Dogon pieces would have been seen to add to, or ‘complete’ such a collection. It is an understanding of what Zachary has called the ‘canon’ of African Art. That the Dogon are seen as an essential part of such a canon is, of course, interesting and relevant to the book, but of little direct relevance to Liverpool.
Zachary has done some very interesting work on the African donors to the original collection and the current gallery within the museum makes a significant point of placing the African individuals back into the story of the collection and its position within Liverpool. Even the Congo material, which was largely purchased by Ridyard, emphasises the role that local African research assistants played in going from village to village asking about the use and relevance of the Nkisi nail figures. This placing of the African individuals, both men and women, at the centre of the story, and recognising their links to Liverpool, where some came to study, or sent their children to study, provides a very different kind of narrative that gets beyond the ‘art/artefact’ debate. It gives a coherence to the gallery and an interest that is historical as well as cultural.
Unfortunately, however, in the middle of the gallery sits a display of items from Benin. These probably could not have been ignored, they are of excellent quality and very impressive items in themselves, a few bronzes and a series of ivory tusks. One of these, on the wall apart from the others, was collected before the British expeditionary force arrived and could well have been a gift to an earlier merchant. The majority, however, came from the violent activities of the British and represent plunder rather than gifts or the result of trade. I did not feel that this distinction was really brought out clearly enough in the display.
At the end of the gallery, on the other hand, some of the items bought in the 1960s are set aside, including a wonderful seated Dogon figure. These are set aside as evidence of a different kind of ‘collecting’ from the bulk of the exhibition and while this makes a useful point, and while most of the items are one-off, because of the way they were purchased, and so could not form part of a wider display of a particular people or region, I did feel the distinction was somewhat false. That, however, is a personal opinion and I still have to say that this was one of the most imaginative and informative exhibitions of African cultural artefacts that I have seen in recent years and would be highly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment