Masterpieces of African and Oceanic Art from Barbier-Mueller Museum

Location: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

Press preview: Monday, June 1, 10 a.m.-noon

An exhibition featuring exceptional works of African and Oceanic sculpture

selected from the extensive holdings of the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva, one

of Europe’s preeminent private collections of non-Western art, will go on view at

The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 2. Presenting more than 35 works—most

spectrum of artistic creativity from two distinct regional traditions that have

profoundly influenced world art.

The exhibition is made possible by Vacheron Constantin.

It was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in collaboration

with the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva.

The Barbier-Mueller collection of African and Oceanic art was founded in the

1920s by Josef Mueller, a pioneering collector of modern and non-Western art, and

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is continued by his son-in-law and daughter Jean Paul and Monique

Barbier-Mueller. Their desire to share the collections with a wider audience

culminated in the opening of the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva in 1977.

Representing more than eight decades of their collecting, the exhibition will reflect

the legacies of their connoisseurship.

African Art

Twenty-one works from western, central, and eastern Africa have been selected to

illustrate both the range of the continent’s artistic creativity and the discerning eye

of the collectors. Among these, an idealized female head in fired clay is a tribute to

the art of portraiture developed by sculptors between the 11th and the 15th century

in the ancient city of Ife, in present-day southwestern Nigeria. A series of iconic

masks includes an exceptional work created by a Teke master (Republic of Congo),

whose brilliant use of color, geometry, and symmetry ignited the imagination of

artist André Derain, one of the previous owners of the work. The technical

virtuosity and inventiveness of West African metalsmiths are epitomized by a

magnificent Malian ornament of the 13th-15th century in the form of a male torso;

this unique piece synthesizes miniaturized detail with bold abstraction.

Oceanic Art

The Oceanic works in the exhibition exemplify the breadth of creative achievement

by artists from across the Pacific. They include figures, masks, and decorative art

from Polynesia, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia, and other regions, in

media ranging from wood and stone to more fragile materials such as bark cloth

and delicately carved turtle shell. Among the works on view is a boldly carved

portrait of a chief from the Batak people of Sumatra, mounted on a fantastic

creature, which served as a supernatural guardian. Other highlights include a rare

wood sculpture from Easter Island that once belonged to the pioneering modern

sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein and a stunning female figure from the Micronesian island

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of Nukuoro remarkable for its elegant lines and strikingly minimalist conception of

the human form.

Kjellgren, Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator of Oceanic art, in

collaboration with Yaëlle Biro, Research Assistant for African art, all in the

Metropolitan’s Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

Exhibition design is by Michael Batista, Exhibition Design Manager; graphics are

by Emil Micha, Senior Graphic Design Manager; and lighting is by Clint Ross

Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Design Managers, all of the Metropolitan

Museum’s Design Department.

A variety of educational programs will be offered in conjunction with this

exhibition.

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April 1, 2009

No extra charge for any exhibition.