Catalogo De Arte Yoruba

Embodying the Sacred
in Yoruba Art
Selections from

The Newark Museum Collection

Kean University

Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art
This catalog is published in conjunction with the exhibition Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba
Art: Selections from the Newark Museum Collection, held at Kean University from January 31
through April 18, 2012, at the Karl and Helen Burger Gallery.
Thisexhibition is based on the show Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art: Featuring the
Bernard and Patricia Wagner Collection, which was jointly organized by the High Museum
of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, and The Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, in 2007 and
co-curated by Carol Thompson, Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art at the High
Museum of Art, and Christa Clarke, Curator of the Arts ofAfrica at the Newark Museum, with
an essay by Dr. Babatunde Lawal, Professor of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Copyright © 2012 The Newark Museum. Copyright for individual essays is held by the authors
and The Newark Museum. All rights are reserved. This book is published for educational
purposes only and may not be sold or reproduced in whole or in part, in any form withoutwritten permission from The Newark Museum.
Unless otherwise noted, photographs are copyrighted by The Newark Museum.
Photography:
Map adapted from Babatunde Lawal, The Gèlèdé Spectacle: Art, Gender and Social Harmony in
an African Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996).
Plate 5: Photograph by Arman
Photographs on the cover, back cover, pages 4 and 6, and all plates are byRichard Goodbody.

Catalogue Design and Production
Paul Klonowski • paul@mindsetcs.com
Neil Tetkowski, Director of University Galleries

www.kean.edu/~gallery

Cover: Dance Vest with Èsù Figures, 19th–20th century, Ìgbómìnà region, Nigeria
Wood, cowrie shells, leather, pigment, 20 3/4 x 10 x 5 1/2 in.
Frontispiece: Egúngún Mask, 20th century, Nigeria, Wood, wool, metal, pigment, 12 x 8 x6 1/2 in. (detail)

Embodying the Sacred
in Yoruba Art
Selections from

The Newark Museum Collection

Kean University
Karl and Helen Burger Gallery
Maxine and Jack Lane Center for academic success

Embodying the Sacred
in Yoruba Art
Selections from

The Newark Museum Collection

January 31 - april 18, 2012

Kean University
Karl and Helen Burger Gallery
Maxine and JackLane Center for academic success

Staff of Authority (Ìpawó Àse), Nigeria, brass, 14 x 5 in.

4

Introduction
The region of West Africa that today includes the countries of Nigeria, Benin, and
Togo is the land of the Yoruba people, whose art is an essential and integral element
in their way of life. This exhibition, Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art, on view
from January 31 through April18, 2012, at Kean University’s Karl and Helen Burger
Gallery, comprises twenty-eight works from the collection of the Newark Museum.
The pieces in the show, which were produced from the late nineteenth through the
twentieth century, highlight the relationship between art and the spiritual world.
The Yoruba are among the oldest and most influential of all African cultures and
today make upone of Africa’s largest ethnic groups. More than 25 million Yoruba
live in Africa, and large vibrant communities of Yoruba immigrants live in the United
States and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, for centuries countless people of
Yoruba descent have been living in the Americas. The broad influence of Yoruba
culture today ranges from religious blends of Santeria to the complex rhythmic
beats ofAfro-Latin and Caribbean music and even to some areas of contemporary
Western art.
We are privileged to be able to study these wonderful works, removed from their
original context, from many points of interest. Clearly, the makers of the objects
never intended to show them in the static environment of a Western art gallery;
art in the Yoruba culture is created for ceremony and ritual, a...