This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
Atlanta art lovers may be surprised that the High Museum of Art is hosting the artwork of ancient Nubia because it has seldom presented exhibitions that go back further than 700 years.
Its oldest medieval holdings date from the 14th century, though its oldest object overall is an elegantly polished stone tool from Niger that dates from the Paleolithic or Neolithic era.
However, High Museum curator of African art Lauren Tate Baeza has selected pieces from a larger Boston exhibit in 2020 to create “Ancient Nubia: Art of the 25th Dynasty From the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.” The exhibit, which runs through Sept. 3, highlights works from about 2,500 years ago when Nubian royalty ruled over Egypt.
Credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
For part of the summer, museum visitors can also view Baeza’s first High Museum exhibition, “Bruce Onobrakpeya: The Mask and the Cross.” The exhibit, which runs through July 30, offers a thematic look at parts of the career of this significant Nigerian modernist artist.
His works have been included in major exhibitions internationally and across the United States. But Onobrakpeya, who is now 90, hasn’t previously received a solo show in an American museum.
What the two exhibitions have in common is as significant as what divides them both chronologically and geographically. (Nubia was in eastern Africa, while Nigeria is on the continent’s west coast.)
The two exhibits together suggest that art across Africa has long been in conversation with neighboring or more distant cultures, whether through trade or conflict.
Ancient Nubia, which was located just south of Egypt, mostly in what is now Sudan, alternated between trade and conflict with its neighbor. Nubia was ruled by Egypt for about 500 years but later ruled Egypt in what is known as the 25th Dynasty. It is this phase of the powerful and artistically productive kingdom that Baeza has chosen to highlight.
Looking closely at the mostly small artworks in this exhibition makes clear the mixed cultural currents. The numerous shawabties, or small figures representing the agricultural laborers who would support the king in his afterlife, have singularly individual facial features, even though their Egyptian-influenced forms depict a standardized standing figure. Despite their resemblance to shawabties from Egypt, these superb sculptures are fascinatingly different from their Egyptian precursors.
Credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The gorgeous diversity of jewelry on display here, from extravagant necklaces to intimate protective amulets, will be one of the most attractive features of the show for many visitors. Others will be interested in the less flamboyant symmetry of the canopic jars that once contained internal organs of members of royal families.
The most charmingly repellent deity of this Egyptianizing segment of Nubian history is Bes, a tongue-extending, lion-faced dwarf whose function was to protect sleeping households from harm and to frighten off evil influences in general. A small amulet and a larger statuette show off his attributes memorably.
“Bruce Onobrakpeya: The Mask and the Cross” reflects a different African response to conflicting and confluent cultures — in this case, Nigerian traditions and British colonialism.
Credit: Courtesy of High Museum of Art
Credit: Courtesy of High Museum of Art
In 1967, Onobrakpeya began 11 years of creating works on Christian themes, commissioned by the Catholic Church. His “Fourteen Stations of the Cross,” a suite of linoleum block prints based on a mural for St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Ebute Metta, Lagos, caused controversy when he set the trial and death of Jesus in 20th-century Nigeria. In his prints, Nigerians in colonial-era police uniforms are the ones carrying out the crucifixion while a local Nigerian magistrate who carried out colonial policy replaces Pontius Pilate.
These works form a key part of his reputation, but it is his subsequent productions as a printmaker turned bas-relief sculptor that are the most spectacularly compelling segment of this exhibition.
His invention of the form he calls the “plastograph” involves deep etching into blocks of plaster, from which textured prints can be made. Plastocasts are tinted, low-relief sculptures incorporating used printing plates, cast and framed in the form of paintings.
The stunning, monumental plastocast “The Last Supper, 2021″ — similar to a 1981 version at the Tate in London — is dominated by an image of Jesus and the Apostles symmetrically arranged around a semi-oval table that holds variously elongated forms resembling drinking cups or ancient oil lamps.
Previous international exhibitions have focused primarily on Onobrakpeya’s reinterpretations of Nigerian cultural traditions, an unfamiliar point of entry for many American viewers. By contrast, “The Mask and the Cross” begins with religious symbols that are familiar to many visitors and then seeks to expand their understanding from there.
Credit: Courtesy of High Museum of Art
Credit: Courtesy of High Museum of Art
Both exhibitions remind us how much we as viewers don’t know and, in the case of ancient Nubia, may never know. They can also serve as an incentive to learn more about ancient and modern cultures unlike ours.
EXHIBITION REVIEWS
“Ancient Nubia: Art of the 25th Dynasty”
“Bruce Onobrakpeya: The Mask and the Cross”
“Ancient Nubia” through Sept. 3 and “Onobrakpeya” through July 30. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. Noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. $18.50. High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. 404-733-4400, high.org.
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Jerry Cullum’s reviews and essays have appeared in Art Papers magazine, Raw Vision, Art in America, ARTnews, International Review of African American Art and many other popular and scholarly journals. In 2020, he was awarded the Rabkin Prize for his outstanding contribution to arts journalism.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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