In recent years, exhibition catalogues of African art have often assumed the refreshing character of comprehensive scholarly monographs. Such publications include not only illustrations of the objects exhibited, but also essays based on meticulous research and field photographs that provide ethnographic context. A number of these catalogues can easily stand on their own, separate and apart from the exhibitions that they accompanied. While special exhibitions of African art can be powerful visual events, they are by their very nature ephemeral. However, scholarly catalogues, whether written by single or multiple authors, can continue to inform intellectual discourse on exhibition content for many years into the future.
Shangaa: Art of Tanzania, edited by Gary van Wyk, represents one of the finest of this genre of publications. It is comprehensive in its discussions of Tanzanian art forms, reflects the meticulous scholarship of the editor and other contributors, and provides readers with a sweeping portrait of the country through numerous field photographs.
Van Wyk, who was born in Zimbabwe and studied in South Africa, was eventually exiled from South Africa because of his activities in the antiapartheid Resistance Art Movement. He later completed his doctorate in art history as a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. He is not only the editor and a contributor to this volume, but was also the curator of the exhibition of the same name that was held at the QCC Art Gallery of the City University of New York, February‒May 2013. This exhibition, which later traveled to the Portland Art Museum, contained one hundred and sixty objects from both public and private collections in Europe and the United States. Van Wyk brought to both the exhibition and this volume his internationally recognized expertise in East and South African art.
A number of books on Tanzanian art have been published previously. These include Ladislas Holy’s Masks from Eastern and Southern Africa (Hamlyn, 1967); Charles Bordogna and Leonard Kahan’s A Tanzanian Tradition (The African Art Museum of the SMA Fathers, 1989); Marc Felix’s Miwana Hiti: Life and Art of the Matrilineal Bantu of Tanzania (Verlag Fred Jahn, 1990); and Jens Jahn’s Tanzania: Meisterwerke Africanischer Skulptur/Sanaa za Mabingwa wa Kiafrika (Verlag Fred Jahn, 1994). More recently, many of the Tanzanian objects in the collection of Carl and Wilma Zabel were illustrated in Charles Bordogna’s The Discerning Eye: African Art from the Collection of Carl and Wilma Zabel (The African Art Museum of the SMA Fathers, 2005).
As the above volumes demonstrate, the arts of Tanzania have been regularly placed before the public. However, Shangaa does so in what is the most comprehensive, accessible, and spectacular manner to date. As a result, it lives up to its title, which in Kiswahili means “amaze.” The book is divided into ten chapters in which the exhibited objects are illustrated in textual contexts and not segregated in a separate and distinct section. In many instances, similar objects in the field are also illustrated. This integration of illustrated exhibited objects with descriptive text and field photographs helps to provide readers with both a visual and ethnographic understanding of the arts of Tanzania. Shangaa is outstanding for its organization, comprehensiveness, the quality of its writing, and the meticulous research supporting the text. These qualities, coupled with its superb physical appearance, make it the current definitive work on Tanzanian art.
Sogo: Maschere e Marionette Bamana is a work that illustrates the globalization of African art. Written in Italian by several contributors, it was published to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Museo delle Culture in the Italian-speaking city of Lugano, Switzerland. The illustrated objects are all from Mali and were collected in Dakar, Senegal, by a French couple, Claude and Marthe Everlé. The Everlés have lived for some four decades in Dakar, where they established the Galerie Antenna, which features not only traditional African art objects, but also the works of contemporary African artists. The global inclusiveness of this exhibition and its catalogue is reflected in the participation of a Malian scholar, Youssouf Tata Cissé, as an advisor, and chapter contributions by Elisabeth den Otter, a Dutch anthropologist and ethnomusicologist, and Olenka Darkowska-Nidzgorski, a Polish/French authority on African puppet theater. Catherine De Clippel, a French documentary filmmaker and photographer, and Sylvain Sionneau, a French photographer, contributed a number of the field photographs taken in Mali.
Edited by Barbara Gianinazzi and Paolo Maiullari, research scientists at the museum, the volume focuses primarily Bamana puppet theater. However, this is presented in the broader context of Bamana initiation societies and age-set associations to which this tradition is closely linked. This book begins with an introductory chapter on the Everlé project by the museum’s director, Francesco Paolo Campione, in which he provides details about the connection between the museum and the Everlés and their donation to the museum of the objects in the exhibit. This is followed by an excellent chapter, “In the Sorcerer’s Cauldron,” in which Darkowska-Nidzgorski provides a splendid overview of both the history and the geographical extent of puppet theater in West Africa. “The Inaccessible Theater of Memory: Masks, Marionettes, and Bamana Society,” by Paolo Maiullari, focuses, through a postmodern lens, on the Bamana festival known as Sogo bo (The Animals Come Out). In “The Animals Come Out: The Bamana Mask Festival,” Elisabeth den Otter expands on Maiullari’s chapter with an emphasis on specific puppets, including those performed in and around canoes. Gianinazzi’s chapter, “Ci-Wara: Multiple Meanings and Art,” covers the ci-wara performance—the mythical antelope figure—in great detail.
All of the chapters of the text are richly illustrated with excellent field photographs from several sources. These and the clearly written chapter texts will provide Italian speakers with a comprehensive introduction to the fascinating world of Bamana masquerades and puppet theater. The catalogue section of the book illustrates the forty-four objects shown in the October‒March 2013 exhibition. Among these objects are nine ci-wara antelopes and thirty-five puppets.
Sogo: Maschere e Marionette Bamana is beautifully produced and greatly enhanced by excellent black-and-white text illustrations and color catalogue photographs. Although its intended audience is Italian speakers, the illustrations alone will make it appealing to a wide audience of those interested in African art.
These two excellent volumes, covering the arts of diverse geographic areas of Africa, highlight the creative talents of numerous artists that now greatly enrich a global audience.
