)
BENIN – KINGS AND RITUALS
Court Arts from Nigeria
May 9 – September 3, 2007
Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna
Ivory and bronze sculptures from the West African Kingdom of Benin, in present-day Nigeria, are among the continent’s most important and valuable works of art. Included in the corpus are elaborate bas-relief plaques, stately commemorative king’s heads and towering elephant tusks embellished with detailed figurative scenes illustrating life at court and the heroic deeds of kings and warriors. These artworks glorified the king, as the political and spiritual head of his people, and honored his ancestors.
The detailed workmanship and outstanding aesthetic quality of Benin’s royal sculpture has been compared to the work of the celebrated Renaissance artist, Cellini. Its wealth of iconographic detail conveys the sumptuousness of the royal court and its historical importance as a regional powerhouse in West Africa from the 16th through the 19th centuries.
In “Benin—Kings and Rituals, Court Arts from Nigeria” over 300 carefully selected objects offer a broad survey of the royal arts and culture of the Kingdom of Benin from its inception in the fourteenth century to its overthrow by British forces in the late nineteenth century; the exhibition further documents the kingdom’s reconstitution during the colonial period and its continuity into the twenty-first century.
Importantly, the exhibition marks the first time that masterpieces from Benin - dispersed in European and American collections since the late-nineteenth century - are reunited and interpreted in light of modern scholarship. Many of these superb works of art are also important ritual objects, valuable symbols of status, or nuanced historical documents that illustrate court ceremonies, versions of which survive to this day. The exhibition will interweave these and other multifaceted themes to reconstruct and interpret the kingdom’s long, rich history.
The exhibition is organized by the Museum für Völkerkunde (Museum of Ethnology) in Vienna and includes over 60 works from its celebrated Benin collection. In preparing the exhibition curators and museum specialists from Vienna have worked closely with museum colleagues and scholars from Europe, Nigeria, and the United States, and with authorities from the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments and the royal family and officials of the Benin Kingdom. Close collaboration with the Ethnologisches Museum (Ethnological Museum) in Berlin and the British Museum in London, where the largest and most important Benin collections are housed, were also of seminal importance.
Europeans have been aware of Benin since the sixteenth century, when close economic ties developed between the kingdom and Portugal. From these earliest times artists in Benin executed curios, including magnificent ivory salt cellars, spoons, and horns, for sale to European sailors and merchants, but the depth of their artistry was never fully revealed.
In 1897 British forces occupied and burned the city of Benin and destroyed the royal palace. Following these tragic events, hundreds of bronze and ivory sculptures, along with royal regalia and other palace furnishings, were shipped to London, where they aroused considerable attention from the European public.
From the fifteenth century on, commemorative heads of kings were the central element of royal ancestral altars that also featured other freestanding bronze sculptures. In the seventeenth century richly carved ivory tusks were added to these ensembles and in the eighteenth century tableaux of bronze figures were introduced. Unique bronze bas-relief plaques illustrating complex court hierarchy, royal rituals, and historical events of the kingdom, were probably produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; according to a seventeenth-century European visitor, they once adorned pillars within the royal palace. When British soldiers occupied the palace they found them in a storage room where it has been speculated they were preserved as a kind of archive. Among the plaque’s imagery are depictions of annual ceremonies comprising rituals to guarantee the survival and prosperity of the kingdom and its inhabitants. The ceremonies feature courtiers and dignitaries from the court’s complex hierarchy paying homage to their king attired in magnificent ceremonial robes and bearing bronze, ivory or coral insignia. These traditions are still very much alive in Benin today. While they have maintained their spiritual importance, they have evolved into popular and colourful festivals that are broadcast on Nigerian television for the enjoyment of a national audience.
A catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition (€ 39,90), available in the museum´s shop or online at www.khm.at.
Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna
May 9 – September 3, 2007
musée du quai Branly, Paris
October 2, 2007 – January 6, 2008
Ethnologisches Museum -
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
February 7 – May 25, 2008
The Art Institute of Chicago
June 27 – September 21, 2008
Downloads
>>Preface Benin (PDF)
>>Press text Benin (PDF)
>>Preface catalog (PDF)
>>Important objects (PDF)
APA Images
>> click here
Information