African Art from Four Regions

African Art from Four Regions: Masks, Sculpture, and Ceremonial Objects from the Western Sudan, the Guinea Coast, Equatorial Africa, and the Congo Basin

May 31 - July 27, 2002

Foreword Introduction | Thumbnails: 1 2 3 4 5

INTRODUCTION

The visual arts of Africa are characterized by enormous diversity, reflecting the variety of cultures, people, languages, and environments that comprise this giant continent. Striving to make organizational sense of a group of objects that includes the creative works of many unnamed artists, the cultural expressions of geographically distinct peoples, as well as the artistic visions of several different collectors, is a challenging task.

The desire to represent and celebrate the artistic diversity of Africa by illustrating works from every region was difficult to suppress, but would have been even more difficult to fulfill. Rather than searching for objects that would, at the most superficial level, constitute a continental survey of the richness of African artistry, the focus instead became the illumination of the cultural contexts, stylistic features, and symbolic power of the seemingly disparate works that Hurst Gallery was fortunate to have.(more introduction...)

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