The Snite Museum of Art Presents Wealth, Power, Society: African Art from the Owen D. Mort, Jr. Collection, on view November 6-December 18, 2011.
The large traditional African art collection of Owen D. Mort, Jr. is in process of being donated to Snite Museum of Art, and the first of three exhibitions showing highlights from the collection is opening this fall in the museum’s O’Shaughnessy Galleries. The “Wealth-Power-Society” exhibition opens in October and features dazzling high status and royal costumes and beadwork, iron and brass weapons, symbols of authority and currency, as well as masks and other objects used to communicate with the spirit world in order to maintain social stability and traditional moral structures. Numbering about one thousand works of art, the collection contains important 19th and 20th century objects from traditional African groups throughout the continent, but the main portion was developed in Zaire, the present day Democratic Republic of Congo, where Mr. Mort lived and worked from 1974-1983.
The second exhibition will focus upon African furniture, household objects, traditional dress and jewelry, and the third upon a comprehensive treatment of the wrought iron and brass weapons, authority symbols and currencies used throughout Africa in the last two hundred years.
Weapons and Symbols
Currency
Masks
Religion and the Spirit World
Expressions of Power and Affluence
Societies
Costume/Textiles/ Dancing
Beads and Beadwork
Image: EXECUTIONER’S MASK
Mbole Group, Democratic Republic of Congo, Salonga River, Central
On extended loan from Mr. Owen D. Mort, Jr.
sniteartmuseum.nd.edu