Black Meetings and Tourism

May-June 2010

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BY PATRICIA ANN JORDAN A POTPOURRI OF MUSEUM HAPPENINGS G reetings, my ever faithful readers! Spring is here! For me it was a pretty cold winter here in Los Angeles. Of course, we Angelenos think it’s cold when it gets to fifty degrees. I survived. This writing I want to share with you a potpourri of museum happenings: The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500 to Present is the first traveling art exhibition to examine 500 years of cultural and political interactions between the peoples of African and European outsiders. It is also the first to do so from African points-of-view. Through African Eyes will be on view at the DIA April 18-August 8, 2010. This exhibition provides riveting visual commentaries on five cen- turies of interactions between Africans and Europeans and Westerners, from early com- mercial relations to founding of European permanent settlements to European colonial rule to recent post-independ- ence interactions with the West. The objects reflect subtle and not-so-subtle views of African artists about Europeans; and also document shifts in African cultural attitudes toward Europeans over the period. By casting the European as the cultural “other,” the exhibition reverses longstanding Eurocentric perspectives that have dom- inated African art studies. African voices, heard through recorded oral histories and personal experiences of African elders and artists, provide their own perspectives on the meanings of the objects and motivations behind their creation. The exhibition features about 100 figurative sculptures and utilitarian objects created in wood, ivory, metals and textiles from the holdings of the DIA and other leading American and international museums and private collections. The artworks will expand the public’s understanding of Africa as a multiplic- ity of cultures, each with a different history of relations with Europeans. Among the countries represented are Ghana, Mali, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Call: (313) 833-7900 14 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) The Expanded Virginia Museum of Fine Arts which is set to open May 1, 2010, is putting the final touches on a large-scale expansion that will add some 165,000 sq. ft. to its pre-existing 380,000-sq. ft. building, placing it among the top 10 compre- hensive art museums in the United States. Tiffany: Color and Light, a significant exhibition with mounted works by the master of American glass, Louis Comfort Tiffany, will debut at VMFA May 29. Richmond is the only city in the United States to host the exhibition. Now in Paris at the Musée du Luxembourg, Tiffany: Color and Light will be on view at VMFA through August 15, 2010. Conceived by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and organized in collaboration with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée du Luxembourg, Tiffany: Color and Light cele- brates the work of the renowned designer who achieved original and spectacular effects in hand-blown glass vessels, lead- ed glass windows and lamps. VMFA lent 14 important works to the exhibition. Visitors can experience the triple- height Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Atrium, a “main street” that will connect the new building to VMFA’s two existing wings and open onto a library, museum shop, café, and galleries. The Tiffany exhibition will inaugurate the new space and is among a series of major international exhibitions coming to VMFA. Visit: http://www.vmfa.museum/expansion.html The Heard Museum –Scottsdale, Arizona The Heard Museum is a must-see for lovers of Native American creations. Visitors can bring home a keepsake from the Museum’s shop, which sells handmade paintings, jewelry and weavings. They also have the option of attending the annual Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market every year featuring more than 700 American Indian artists, food, and music and dance performances. Contact: jmartin@heard.org or (602) 252-8840 Black Meetings & Tourism May/June 2010: www.blackmeetingsandtourism.com

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