January 23, 2017 • 41 mins
Holly is joined in the studio by Carol Thompson, Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art at the High Museum of Art. Carol shares her incredible knowledge, stories from her personal life and the importance of studying Africa's rich art tradition.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and we
have a fun interview today. If you have ever been
to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and you
(00:22):
have experienced they're really impressive and incredibly lovely African art collection,
what you may not realize is that is the vision
of primarily one person, who is Carol Thompson, our guest today.
Carol has been with the High for nearly sixteen years
as the Fred and Rita Richmond Curator of African Art,
and she was kind enough to the studio and sit
(00:42):
down to talk with Holly about her career path, her
passion for art, and the challenges of assembling a collection. Yeah,
she also talks a lot about the importance of African
art in world history and world culture. So let's hop
right in. So today we are super duper lucky because
(01:03):
I have in studio with me Carol Thompson, who is
the Fred and Rita Richmond Curator of African Art at
the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. How lucky am I?
Thank you so much? Alie, Oh my goodness, thank you
for being here. So I know we have a lot
of listeners that are very interested in art and art history.
So I have to ask you right out of the gate,
how did you become an art curator? I feel like
(01:24):
that's one of those things people always say it's a
dream job, but they don't know if there are multiple
avenues to get into that career or if it's a
fairly set track. So tell us how to become you.
So there there are many paths, and my path was
certainly a long and winding path, not a straight line
at all. Some people choose the straight line, which would
(01:44):
be academic straight through PhD as quickly as possible. I
did not do that. I'm from a small small town
in Minnesota, and everyone first meets me and says, how
in the world could you be the curator of African art?
Since you can see my face, you don't know that
my eyes are blue and at the car at the moment,
I have champagne blonde hair, but my hair is normally
(02:06):
so I'm a blonde, blue eyed Norwegian ancestry. But I'm
gonna actually, if you forgive me, Holly, I'm going to
jump to the very last question that you're about to
ask me. And in my view, just as French and
impresent impressionism is not only for the French, African art
is not only for Africans and not only for people's
(02:26):
of African ancestry. But then on the other hand, if
you look back in history, everyone is of African ancestry.
But of course you know so. But to be more precise,
I I was introduced. I became interested in art when
I was in high school, and I started out drawing,
and I sometimes still draw. So I started out as
(02:48):
as an artist. And my first drawing professor at Hamlin
University came from a family that collected African art, and
that was St. Paul, Minnesota, just adjacent to Minneapolis. He said,
you should also pay attention to African art. The Minneapolis
Institute has a tremendous collection of African art. The Walker
Arts Center at that time was presenting a fantastic exhibition
(03:11):
of the arts of Ghana, and there was an African
film festival at the time. African cinema remains one of
my strong interests. But at the undergraduate level, I was
interested in art from lots of different times and places.
But when I decided to go on to pursue a PhD,
I went to the University of Iowa. I had already
(03:32):
lived in New York and Paris, and I thought, let
me go back to the Midwest, be near my parents
for a minute and my family, because no doubt I'm
going to be leaving again after I finished my study.
And so I went to the University of Iowa. And
that Art History department is the first department in the
country to offer African art at the level of a
(03:53):
PhD in the Art history department. And who would think
the University of Iowa. Yeah, that would not have been
my first guest, right, And it's because of an artist,
Murie Sila Lozanski, who was the father of Leo Lozanski,
my drawing professor, that told me to look at African art,
not forget African art. So but then I so at
(04:15):
the meaning of this institute. There is a mask that
I still can see so clearly in my mind, and
it's despite differently now than it was when I was
in in the seventies in undergraduate school. At that time,
it was all by itself in a case and you
could see it from the back as well. As from
the front, and it's a mask that has four eyes,
(04:36):
two noses, two miles, so it looks like three faces overlapping,
so it looks like it's in motion even when still.
Oh how beautiful. Yeah, and that's I was contemplating whether
or not I should reveal this information about myself. But
after working in New York at the Center for African
Art from seven to I think nineteen ninety six, I
(05:01):
returned to school too. I only did my m A
at the University of Iowa. I did some graduate work
in art history at Columbia while I was with the
Center for African Art. But then after nine years with
the museum, very extraordinary time, I decided, okay, time to
get a PhD. So I moved on to the Department
of Performance Studies at n y U two School of
(05:24):
the Arts. And this is the reveal that I don't
often reveal. I'm a b D. All but dissertation the
dirty secret. That's the dirty secret. So when you first
become a b D, it's something to tell the world
because that means you've finished all of the course work.
But to not write your dissertation, it's a it's a
(05:44):
terrible waste but at this point in my life, I've
published so much. I have had already was quite a
productive career to go back and do that. And my
dissertation was approved the title I worked on it. There's
a big outline when of my advisers said, Carol, each
chapter could be a dissertation. But stubborn headed as I am,
I thought, I'm going to do it this way. So
(06:04):
the title of that unwritten dissertation was African Art Performing Objects.
Actually another title slaves to Sculpture, African art performing Objects.
So of course that mask was exactly saying you a
siren song. That's right, Yeah, that's lovely. Was there a
point at which you realize like African artists definitely the
(06:28):
thing for me? Was it something you ruminated over or
was there just something that drew it assure you to it?
And as a decisive moment said, the decisive moment was
when I was at the University of Iowa and my
professor at the time, Christopher roy I went. I remember
when I first met him. It was a little cocktail
party to introduce the new grad students to the faculty
(06:49):
and other students, and I, for some reason got into
a conversation with him about Burkina Fossio because that's one
of his areas of expertise. And I said the capital
of the city and I mispronounced it. I said Uga
doo Goo and he said, Carol, it's Waga douke. And
(07:10):
just a couple Just last week, I was talking to
Michael Rooks, my closest colleague at the High the curator
of Contemporary and Modern Art, and I was talking about
Waga Doog and it just made him. He did that laugh,
that snorting laugh. He didn't believe that it was really
a place. And I remember sending sending money to someone
who is my translator and who I commissioned work from
Jacoba Bonde, sculptor from the Bois region. And when I
(07:34):
went to Western Union, they said Burkina Fasso, that's not
a place. We can't send money there. And I said, no,
really it is. It is a place and we can't
send money there. So anyway, so when my professor Christopher Roy,
actually right in my first and second year there, he
was going to Burkina Faso every spring semester and some
(07:57):
of the grad students were complaining. I came here to
study with him, and he's not even here, and I said, no, no, no,
this is a very good thing. That means he's at
the forefront of this discipline and he is really one
of the world's experts on the art of Burkina. He's
published this gigantic book of the Tom Wheelock Collection, which
is the most important collection of art from Burkina in
(08:17):
the world. We've had works on loans from that collection,
but Chris roy would He was getting funding from National
Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and
even to this day he loves video. And that was
in the eighties and video was not so big as
it is now. And he was going to Burkina Faso
(08:40):
and attending masquerade performances throughout the whole nation and they're
more than sixty different ethnic groups there. So he's documented
the masquerade traditions of all of Verkina. And he would
come back with video and so in the classroom he
would be showing slides and then he would stop the
(09:03):
slide projector and show this unedited raw footage of masquerade
in Burkina, and it was larger than life. I was like, okay,
this is it. I gotta go to Burkino also, and
they have masquerade traditions that have wooden elements the masks
that we have in museums, but they also have a
type of mask that I just became enthralled by leaf masks.
(09:28):
They're they're a bit like nick Cave from the artists
and he's, okay, wonderful, I have to go ahead and
find that. So there, it's a very sacred form and
the it's a body total. Your body body is covered
with leaves, and that mask is the embodiment of the
(09:53):
spirit of dough and dough. It's all about regeneration. So
the masquerade performs Burkina is on the edge of the
Sarah Sahara, so the masquerade performs at the end of
the dry season before the next agricultural season begins. It's
considered the oldest and most sacred of the masquerade traditions.
(10:13):
And there's almost a competition between families the masks, the
families that used leaf masks as opposed to the newcomers
who use wood masks. So I I love both, but
I I'm actually initiated because the first time I went there,
I wanted to be close to the leaf masks and
they said no. Carol only for the initiated, so I
(10:34):
could watch the masquerade over the earthen wall of the
compound where I was staying with Mama du full Fauna
Muslim family. But I couldn't approach the masks, so that
was frustrating. It was frustrating that then I went back
to Burkina Falso, before I came to Atlanta in two
(10:54):
thousand one, I had finished my coursework at n y U,
I was teaching at Vasser, was teaching African Art at
Vassar and Introduction to World to Our Art at City
City College in Harlem, and somehow I managed to carve
out four weeks mid semester, Oh my goodness to go
to Burkina Fossa. I got substitutes to cover for me,
and I got a research grant faculty research grant from
(11:17):
Vassar to go to Burkina Fossa. And I went with
my best friend, one of my best friends still today,
Patricia Blanche, who has done a whole series of photographs
from that moment called Burkina Reflected large scale formal portraits,
a bit inspired by the work of Malik CD Bay
and say Kita. She actually had a show at was
what was the Ace Atlantic College of Art Gallery now
(11:39):
SCAD those large scale color portraits. Borkina reflected, But that
was just amazing. I was hadn't been there from eight
seven to two thousand one, and the people were like,
she came back, and she came back with photographs that
she talked when she was here in eight seven. So
I had pictures, small little pictures, but pictures of people
(11:59):
who had grown up, pictures of people who had died.
And that was partly what sort of inspired Patricia to
then start this photo series. And then we traveled back
to Burkina together and two thousand three and two thousand
five we haven't been back since, so but I would
love to return again. But then there are so many
other places in Africa I'd also like to go to.
(12:20):
So that was a long and winding road. Yeah, but
you ended up initiated, so you can get close to
those maps exactly. I forgot to say thank you. So
so when I went back with Patricia in two thousand two,
the leaf Masks were performing in another town and I said,
but I thought they could only you could only you
know be They said, no, no, no, Doe speaks all languages.
(12:45):
Anyone can come with two dough with a sort of ask. Gotcha.
So I had just applied for the job at the
High Museum. So my ask was see here the position
at the Hi Museum as cur water of African art.
So in order to do that, I had to make
a sacrifice to dough and part of that involved than
(13:08):
the being the masquerade being performed. So oh, how wonderful.
The only thing I wasn't able to wear red and
I was I had a red dress. They said no
where red dress is allowed, but I could wear my
lipstick well being initiated. But I just love the idea
of the spirit of regeneration. I mean that I could that.
And someone asked me, are you a Christian? I said,
(13:30):
I have another faith and it's more based on nature
and the spirit of regeneration. I'm a child of dope.
Oh that's lovely. Um. I want to switch gears a
little bit because I have heard you talk before about
the importance of education, uh and how it combats some
of these long held and very problematic ideas that people
(13:51):
have about African art and some very racist stereotypes. So
could you uh talk a little bit about the gap
that exists between those ideas that were planted in the
nineteenth century that really do a great disservice to African
art and the actual reality and sort of why that
gap exists. Yeah, absolutely, thank you so much. It's so
(14:12):
important and that's really one of the reasons why I
am a friend of mine. You know, before I came
here said she saw an announcement about the position curator
of African Art at the High and she said, that
would be an interesting job be in Atlanta and be
responsible for, you know, conveying the importance of African art
(14:33):
to the people of the city, of the region, and
then even beyond. But I was I had friends visiting
just a couple of months ago and went over to
the Center for Human insul Rights and right there at
the entrance, if you still see those TVs from the fifties,
that very powerful display, various people talking my white men
talking about various things, and one of them, the man
(14:54):
is saying, you know, Africa, they were savages, and you
know they're best off here. You know, the people of
the South were better to them than anything they knew
before they came here. And like, uh oh no, not quite.
So one of the very deepest stereotypes about Africa is
(15:16):
that and this was um Hegel, the German philosopher, that
Africa has no history because it's the spoken word that
is so highly valued r and the oral tradition which
even comes through in hip hop to this day. So
the misperception that Africa has no history because their history
(15:37):
isn't written is totally wrong. And also there are Islamic
records going way back in time. The High just recently
acquired a Koran that is written from tim Buck two,
the place of great scholarship from the eleventh to the
sixteenth century, then declined because of the shift of this
trans Saharan trade to the transatlantic trade. But tim Buck
(15:59):
two was so so so important and so history in
Arabic but also history handed down by word of mouth.
The High has a work that was relatively recently acquired.
When we acquired it, we didn't know that it's full importance.
And this has become my favorite work in the collection.
(16:22):
And it's actually I wrote about it for the Museum's
High Life magazine that the museum, the magazine that sent
out to all members. It's a sculpture that comes from
the region of the ancient city of jenn A. Jenny
is like is a sister city to timbuck To. Jenna
is believed to be the oldest city in Sub Saharan Africa.
(16:43):
So that's the reason where this work comes from. Jen
A is a UNESCO. The entire city is a World
Heritage Site because of the great mosque, the earthen mosque
that's at the scale of Notre Dame, and there's you
can go online. You can find wonderful videos, even in
New York Times video that talks about the importance of
this city. So that mosque is made out of red clay,
(17:07):
just like the terra cotta sculpture that we have in
the collection. Recently, we collaborated with Grady Hospital and we
took the sculpture over to Grady and did a CT
scan and then after that we sent small samples to
a lab at at Oxford and England. And we needed
needed to do that because a couple of European colleagues
(17:29):
of mine we're working on an article and they wanted
to include the high sculpture, but they would not include
it until we provided the CT scan and the t
L test to verify its authenticity. We did that. We
also got beautiful three D images of the work and grady,
it was so fun and I should shout out give
(17:50):
a shout out to my colleagues there Dr Malco and
Dr Fontaine. But facilitated by renee Stein, the object conservator
over at Emery and at the Carlos. Together we did
this CT scanning and that then we provided that information
(18:11):
to these two scholars. But this the TL test told
us that the work was created sometime between twelve fifteen
and fifteen fifteen, at the height of the Empire of Mali,
which was the West African empire that spread all the
way to the Atlantic and even as far in inland
as Burkina and Niger than one of the greatest empires
(18:32):
of that time, so founded by Sunjata. The Epic of
Sunjata is that the oral history that was only written
down relatively recently by a scholar from Guinea. And you
can read the Epic of Sunjata. When I taught at
City College in Harlem, it was required reading for all
press freshmen as world literature. That was the one that
(18:53):
was at the top of the list for Africa. Anyway,
the sculpture. Back to the sculpture, it's a fragment. But
it's an extraordinarily it's an extraordinary work that it's a
female torso wrapped in snakes, but it looks like a
dancing figure. It has so much movement, which is quite
(19:14):
unusual for an African sculpture. Another feature of the sculpture
that I always wondered about that there's it looks almost
like a mountain range of running vertically between the breasts,
and it's so anatomically incorrect. I thought, what is this?
So these two scholars have assembled a whole group of
(19:37):
works that are portraits of Soga Long so Go long
a s O g O l O and so Long
so Long was the mother of sun Jatta. A right,
we have a portrait of sin mother of sun Jata,
founder of the Mali Empire. And we know this because
(19:58):
that little projection between her breasts. There are other sculptures
that didn't share that same feature. And in the oral
history she went so she was a real woman. She
gave birth to Sungata. She became a mythical personality, and
one of her abilities was to shoot porson poison tipped
porcupine quills from her chest. Can do that, right? I
(20:22):
mean that acquire able skill exactly, and she also could
be exproud horns and become a buffalo woman. And you
can actually see her turn into a buffalo woman as
she comes out of a tree trunk in the future
film called cat Heritage of a Grio it is. We
(20:43):
just did an episode slightly different about Great Zimbabwe and
how that had been believed for a long time to
have been built by some other culture that exactly, no, no, no,
was not attributed to the people that actually built and
lived there for a long time. I'd love to go there.
It's on my bucket list, along with Labella and so
many other places. Perfect. We are next going to talk
(21:04):
about kind of how the layman can get they're in
into African art history. But first we're going to pause
and have a word from one of our fantastic sponsors.
So jumping back in, there are so many different styles
of art in African history, and I know for someone
(21:25):
who is not particularly familiar with it, it can be
a little overwhelming. So where do you start to educate
someone who's interested in African art art history but just
doesn't know where to begin. Come to the High Museum.
Not everybody's in Atlanta, because at the website. Yeah, or
go to any museum that has African art and look
(21:46):
at the collection and just go towards whatever draws you
in and then find out more about whatever that is
and then start from there. Just find your moment. Yeah,
you could even go to the Atlanta Airport and visit
it there love actually quite lovely sculpture collection. You could
or you could go. There's going to be an exhibition.
(22:06):
Can I give a plug to Savannah College of Art
in February is going to present the work of a
young artist named Omar Victor Diop And he's from Deaker
but moves around in the world, often in Paris. He'll
be here in Atlanta, which is extraordinary. And he has
done a whole series called it's called the Project Diaspora,
(22:30):
and he he their portraits self portraits, but he presents
himself as a historic figure. Oh I love it, but
with some like a soccer ball or something just to
disrupt that image. And I'm going to just read for
a moment about one of his works that I particularly love.
(22:52):
It's u portrait of a Prince from the Kingdom of
the Congo, which is well represent entered in the highest
collection Congo Art Congo with a k. You might remember
the Congo across the water show that was at the
Carter Center a couple of years ago. It was beautiful, amazing, amazing. Anyway,
this prince from the Kingdom of the Congo. So was
(23:14):
perhaps one of the earliest African leaders who wrote publicly
to protest protest colonial influences. Nikolau protest protested against Portuguese
commercial and political activity and military expansion by publishing a
letter in a Portuguese newspaper in Lisbon. His exact birthday
(23:35):
remains uncertain. Contemporary engravings of the Nicholas rather during his
visit in Lisbon in five suggests that he was then
perhaps fifteen to twenty years of age. Anyway, it's a wonderful,
glorious portrait of this prince from the Kingdom of the Congo.
And you'll be able to see it at SCAD in February.
(23:55):
Oh that sounds excellent, So if you're in Atlanta, go
see it. If you're not, go to your ZM and
find that one thing that catches your eye where there's
also I've been looking at Art News Africa Instagram feed fabulous.
I haven't followed it, but I will now. Yeah, it's
wonderful and it's such a you can see such a
(24:15):
broad range of work there now as a curator, which
you have been doing for quite some time. Now, what
are the biggest challenges that you personally face when you're
developing a collection or an exhibit that focuses on African art? Money?
Money always you need a budget to buy art, and
I've done really well also getting gifts. I had a
(24:38):
very strong network. I have a very strong network of
collectors across the nation and even in Europe who have
made gifts to the High Museum. So I've been able
to build a respectable collection, not so much through purchases
but through gifts. But museums, not only the High Museum,
but even the Met I think especially bef us of
(25:00):
their recent expansion and all the cost of that. Museums
are always in need of benefactors, and in this day
and age, new benefactors, the next generation. So I hope
in Atlanta, especially with Rand Suffolk in place as our
new director, we're reaching out out to community communities across
(25:22):
Atlanta in a way that we have never never really
done so thoroughly and deeply before. Well hopefully, I mean
we all dream of world where like art is always
funded and endowments are always good, and my position is endowed.
I do have another special inditiative endowment that provides some
(25:42):
funds for acquisitions, but that endowment is established to help
the High established regional leadership in African art. Funds can
be used for exhibitions, acquisitions, travel and research programming. So
you can imagine the pressure on those limited funds. So more,
if anyone would like to and make an endowment and
(26:04):
have a legacy the um SO and SO African Art
Endowment at the High Museum, they can join Fred and
Rita as a nice uh. And you wrote a book
titled African Art Portfolio and illustrated introduction masterpieces from the
eleventh to the twentieth centuries, and it touches a lot
on the use of art as a means of spiritual
(26:25):
communication with ancestors. Can you talk a little bit about
that and the important role of spirituality in African art. So,
I actually meant to go back and look at that
book because it's been so long since I wrote that book.
It was when I was at the Center for African
Art in New York and I was in charge of
the education program. I started out in cure toil at
(26:45):
the Center for African Art when it was into adjacent
townhouses at sixty eight in Park. Then we moved and
moved to Soho and somewhere in that time between eight
seven and ninety six, I became the I was in
charge of the education department. Then I switched back to curatorial.
But I wrote that book when I was ahead of
(27:06):
the education department, and so it's a very introductory publication
based on works previously previously exhibited at the Center for
African Art. And you can see this band eleventh to
the twentieth century. It's got to be But spirituality. One
of the shows that I worked in worked on and
that I'm sure is represented in that book was called
(27:27):
wild Spirits, Strong Medicine, African Art and the Wilderness. And
in terms of spirit spirituality in Africa, it's not just
one thing. It takes so many different forms. And that
Instagram feed I was just looking at it recently. There
was there was there's a fantastic little short video clip
(27:49):
of a cloth masquerade performing. It's a it's a made
out of cloth and when the dancer moves, it turns
into this big circle that like Spy World, moves all
across the dance space. And it's a festival that takes
place in Benin to this day, and it just took
place January ten, so I wish I had been there.
(28:10):
But and it's to honor ancestral spirits through cloth masquerade performance.
No museum does have on view and agung Cloth Masquerade
and the Gunging Masquerade Association it's a men's masquerade association
that honors ancestral spirits through cloth masquerade performance. So that's
just one example. But Wild Spirits Strong Medicine included a
(28:33):
whole entourage of masks from Burkina Fosso that are conceived
in part to harness the power of nature spirits to
the benefit of humankind. Lovely um. The other thing that
I want to talk about, and you kind of gave
me a nice intro at the very top, is a
(28:54):
little bit about the way African art, as she said,
you know, there's we sort of all come from there,
but we don't really think about how much African art
has really influenced global arts. Can you talk a little
bit about that? Absolutely, And of course everyone thinks of
Picasso first off, and we do have a wonderful mask
in the High Museum's collection. It's a recent acquisition, relatively
(29:17):
recent acquisition. It's made possible through the collector's Evening initiative.
It's a mask from the Penday region of Democratic Republic
of the Congo. Pende masquerade continues to the present. This
mask was probably created during the thirties, and it has
an extraordinarily distorted face that is black on one side
and white on the other, and so it's a very
(29:39):
abstract kind of work. And the famous famous exhibition that
was at the Museum of Modern Art and then I
think eighty four Primitivism. You might have the two volume
catalog in its common in many libraries because it was
a landmark exhibition and there's an image of this this
very mask, and they the author I remember, there were
(30:04):
so many different authors, but I think it's in the
chapter that William Ruben, the curator wrote about cites this
Pende mask as a source of inspiration to Picasso's Les
demoise l d'Avignon. But then another scholars stays, no, Pende
masks weren't yet in the these lum at that time,
and it was Picasso. There's famous quotes about from Coso
(30:27):
Picasso talking about his visit to these lam and he
was so so, so so struck by the African art
that he saw, and that was something that led to
Lay Demoiselle. But of course that's just that's early twentieth century. There.
I think I've become more and more interested in African
art and late and early twentieth century artists. When I
(30:54):
was in New York, I was particularly drawn to work
created by David Hammonds, and one of the works I
think was actually e inspired in part by an image
from my book The African Art Portfolio. It's one of
my favorite masks in the world. It's a mask gelida.
Mask Galada, like a gong, is a Yorba men's masquerade tradition,
(31:15):
but it is for the ancestors to honor the ancestral spirits.
A um gellida is to honor women. So there's image
of what I think is the most beautiful gelida in
the world that I had hoped to acquire for the
high but when it's sold at auction, the estimate was
I think one fifty fifty thousand. It went for much
(31:41):
more than that. I couldn't have even reached that mark
just pin money, and I think it's actually going to
be somewhere in Qatar. Finished one of those museums. Glorious,
sublime work of art. But David Hammond's roughly at the
time that my portfolio was published, and I shared that
book with him, he created a work called Freudian Slip.
(32:04):
And he comes from a family, he had had six sisters,
and he put a woman slip, one of those old
fashioned slips with the little pleated skirt sort of translucent pink.
He put a Gallada mask that he found, I think
at the time it was Chelsea Market was telling, you know,
sort of replica objects. So he got a Galladay mask
(32:27):
and he put it under the slip of the skirt
in this slip, and he called it Freudian Slip. And
to me it's just one of the most extraordinary works.
But you know, we already mentioned Nick Cave. There are
so many artists, but even young, young artists in Africa today,
in cities all across the continent. They're creating work that
does I mean sometimes not at all. Sometimes they're more
(32:50):
engaged by other ways of making art, but sometimes they do.
Like Omar Vic Grdop, he's referring to the bast past
while he creates temporary work. And I imagine there are
a lot of artists that don't even realize that the
influence has trickled down to them and their work, not
just in Africa, but throughout the globe. We just had
(33:11):
a visitor, a student who's finishing her PhD at Berkeley,
writing about the work of Howard, Dean and Pendell. And
she's an artist whose work is represented in the Highest Collection.
She had a show at Spellman and spoke recently. But
I I was just with this visitor looking at one
of her dot paintings that is in the Highest Collection.
It's a small work. It looks like an abstract, sort
(33:32):
of minimalist color field work. She took paper, punched circles
and in a very careful way sort of sprinkled them
and secured them. So it's it's a it's a work
on paper, but three dimensional, absolutely amazing. And she talks
about one of the sources of inspiration for that work
was African bead work. So it's not only mask but
(33:55):
you can find so many, so many different ways to
approach African art and being inspired by it. I love it. Uh,
we are gonna once again, pause for a brief word
from a sponsor before we come back and finish our
chat with Carol. So hang in, we'll be right back
with you, okay. So one thing that I had to
(34:18):
wonder because I think when their areas that maybe people
don't always know about, there's always a moment, like a
light bulb moment or a moment of surprise. So what
do you find surprises people the most when they start
to really learn about the very rich and broad spectrum
of African art and its history. You know, I think
(34:39):
that's something that artists like Ellen not swe have achieved
in a way that is most remarkable. It's The High
has one of his sometimes referred to as metalcloth sculptures,
and it's on view in the African Art Gallery. When
we first acquired it, it was presented on the Skyway
(35:01):
Gallery of Contemporary Art, which is what he would prefer.
But when people see that work, if you've never seen
a work by Ellen not Sue, it's kind of like
a magnet. It just draws people in and they wonder,
you know, how is this made? It's so extraordinary and
he's become now the High acquired the magnificent work that
(35:23):
we have by l before. He's skyrocketed to international art stardom.
So now his work is everywhere and just very widely known.
But for people who have never seen it. When you
see a work by Ellen at SWI for the first time,
it's it's one of those moments of awe. Yeah, is
(35:45):
that it Usually people just become odd when they realize
what's there to be explored and discovered. Yeah, and the
accomplishment of it, because it's so ingenious, so simple, and
it's there. You know, he's been on an Art twenty one.
You can just google L E L short for Emmanuel Anatsui.
I won't spell the name, but you can find it
(36:06):
and put it in show now, okay. And he has
a whole workshop of assistants working with him now and
they produced He prefers to make really large works. And
at the Venice B and L. The same year that,
the year after the High acquired the work that we have,
he had a gigantic metal cloth sculpture on the facade
(36:27):
of the Fortuny Palace. But he's done equally as large
scale works at various as on the facades of various
museums in London, Berlin and that's he likes to create
the gigantic works because they even convey a greater sense
of movement than the more small scale work that we
(36:49):
have in the highest collection. But they and that's for
him almost a metaphor of metaphor for sort of how
all human being sort of long for a sense of
freedom and mobility. He never wants to work to look
like it's pinned down. That it should convey convey a
(37:11):
sense of movement. It's the universal right. And you kind
of touched on this when you did your sneaky jump
around earlier. But if there were one thing that you
just wish that everybody could magically know and understand about
African art and its history, what would it be That
it's not only for yeah, people of African ancestry or
(37:32):
for African people, it's it's a to me African art.
And this is maybe I think about when I was
a small child living in Minnesota, and I would go
bicycling bicycling with my friends and brother and sister and cousins,
and we would bicycle to this little farm where there
was a well and it was really cool, delicious fresh water.
(37:56):
And to me, African art is like a it was
a fresh it was a spring. It's a well that
will you'll never make it to the end, so it's
never boring. There's always something new to learn, because of
course Africa is such a gigantic continent with such a
rich history and so many diverse artistic traditions, and it's
(38:17):
open for all. I love it. That's so beautiful. And
I'm warning you now of the danger that I will
just be lurking at the High looking for you at
all times. Carol, thank you so much for spending time
with us. We're so spoiled. Thank you, Holly, Oh, it's
such a delight. We will include in our show notes
all of the information about UH, the incredible collection that
(38:38):
Carol has put together at the High Museum of Art,
as well as some of the key points she hit
on in her answers and discussion UH, and then we
will wrap up with a bit of listener mail. I
so love and was terribly charmed by her comparison of
(39:00):
African art to a never ending well of refreshing spring water.
Thank you so much again to Carol for sharing her
story and her knowledge with us. We'll have links in
the show notes to the Highest Collection as well as
the Instagram account that she mentioned in the interview. Yeah,
she was just lovely and I she very sweetly when
we had wrapped and said, oh, you should come down
(39:20):
any time. And I was like, Carol, this is like
feeding a stray cat. I will just show up at
the museum daily and be like, Hi, would you like
to spend time with me and tell me about everything
in the collection. Uh. She was wonderful and terribly gracious.
So thank you, thank you, thank you. Uh. And now
I have some fun listener mail, and I'll keep it
short because that interview is a little lengthy. Uh. This
is all from our listener Hannah, who has been traveling
(39:42):
in Scotland, and she very sweetly sent us four postcards. Uh.
One is Sterling Castle, which is a lovely picture. Another
is Dune Castle, which is where Money Python filmed bits
of Holy Grail. Uh. And this lovely then Uh she
sent a really lovely picture of a Highland address suit,
(40:06):
which she said, in all honesty, this just seemed like
the most Scottish possible image to send Holly, which is accurate.
And the last one was really really cool. She writes.
These are some of the tiny dolls and coffins found
by schoolboys at Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. No one is
sure who made them or why they exist. My favorite
theory is that they were made to provide earthly bodies
(40:26):
for the seventeen victims of William Burg and William Hair.
So thank you so much, Hannah for all of these
beautiful postcards. Again, I know I always say it, I'm
saying it again. I'm always so honored that people would
take time out of their vacations to think of us.
So I cannot appreciate our listeners more. And when you
do that, it, uh, it's very touching. So if you
(40:47):
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast. At how stuff works dot com, you
can find us across the spectrum of social media as
missed in History, which means Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumbler, Pinterest. Uh.
Come and see all of our social things. We will
chat with you. You You can also visit our parents site,
which is how stuff Works dot com. You can look
(41:08):
up Arn't there, but you could look up almost anything
else you could think of and many many results will
come to you with lots and lots of information. You
can also visit us at missed in history dot com,
where we have a complete archive of every episode of
the show that has ever existed, as well as show
notes on any of the episodes Tracy and I have
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in all of these things and visit us at missed
(41:30):
in history dot com and how stuff Works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics, because
it how stuff works dot Com.
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and we
have a fun interview today. If you have ever been
to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and you
(00:22):
have experienced they're really impressive and incredibly lovely African art collection,
what you may not realize is that is the vision
of primarily one person, who is Carol Thompson, our guest today.
Carol has been with the High for nearly sixteen years
as the Fred and Rita Richmond Curator of African Art,
and she was kind enough to the studio and sit
(00:42):
down to talk with Holly about her career path, her
passion for art, and the challenges of assembling a collection. Yeah,
she also talks a lot about the importance of African
art in world history and world culture. So let's hop
right in. So today we are super duper lucky because
(01:03):
I have in studio with me Carol Thompson, who is
the Fred and Rita Richmond Curator of African Art at
the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. How lucky am I?
Thank you so much? Alie, Oh my goodness, thank you
for being here. So I know we have a lot
of listeners that are very interested in art and art history.
So I have to ask you right out of the gate,
how did you become an art curator? I feel like
(01:24):
that's one of those things people always say it's a
dream job, but they don't know if there are multiple
avenues to get into that career or if it's a
fairly set track. So tell us how to become you.
So there there are many paths, and my path was
certainly a long and winding path, not a straight line
at all. Some people choose the straight line, which would
(01:44):
be academic straight through PhD as quickly as possible. I
did not do that. I'm from a small small town
in Minnesota, and everyone first meets me and says, how
in the world could you be the curator of African art?
Since you can see my face, you don't know that
my eyes are blue and at the car at the moment,
I have champagne blonde hair, but my hair is normally
(02:06):
so I'm a blonde, blue eyed Norwegian ancestry. But I'm
gonna actually, if you forgive me, Holly, I'm going to
jump to the very last question that you're about to
ask me. And in my view, just as French and
impresent impressionism is not only for the French, African art
is not only for Africans and not only for people's
(02:26):
of African ancestry. But then on the other hand, if
you look back in history, everyone is of African ancestry.
But of course you know so. But to be more precise,
I I was introduced. I became interested in art when
I was in high school, and I started out drawing,
and I sometimes still draw. So I started out as
(02:48):
as an artist. And my first drawing professor at Hamlin
University came from a family that collected African art, and
that was St. Paul, Minnesota, just adjacent to Minneapolis. He said,
you should also pay attention to African art. The Minneapolis
Institute has a tremendous collection of African art. The Walker
Arts Center at that time was presenting a fantastic exhibition
(03:11):
of the arts of Ghana, and there was an African
film festival at the time. African cinema remains one of
my strong interests. But at the undergraduate level, I was
interested in art from lots of different times and places.
But when I decided to go on to pursue a PhD,
I went to the University of Iowa. I had already
(03:32):
lived in New York and Paris, and I thought, let
me go back to the Midwest, be near my parents
for a minute and my family, because no doubt I'm
going to be leaving again after I finished my study.
And so I went to the University of Iowa. And
that Art History department is the first department in the
country to offer African art at the level of a
(03:53):
PhD in the Art history department. And who would think
the University of Iowa. Yeah, that would not have been
my first guest, right, And it's because of an artist,
Murie Sila Lozanski, who was the father of Leo Lozanski,
my drawing professor, that told me to look at African art,
not forget African art. So but then I so at
(04:15):
the meaning of this institute. There is a mask that
I still can see so clearly in my mind, and
it's despite differently now than it was when I was
in in the seventies in undergraduate school. At that time,
it was all by itself in a case and you
could see it from the back as well. As from
the front, and it's a mask that has four eyes,
(04:36):
two noses, two miles, so it looks like three faces overlapping,
so it looks like it's in motion even when still.
Oh how beautiful. Yeah, and that's I was contemplating whether
or not I should reveal this information about myself. But
after working in New York at the Center for African
Art from seven to I think nineteen ninety six, I
(05:01):
returned to school too. I only did my m A
at the University of Iowa. I did some graduate work
in art history at Columbia while I was with the
Center for African Art. But then after nine years with
the museum, very extraordinary time, I decided, okay, time to
get a PhD. So I moved on to the Department
of Performance Studies at n y U two School of
(05:24):
the Arts. And this is the reveal that I don't
often reveal. I'm a b D. All but dissertation the
dirty secret. That's the dirty secret. So when you first
become a b D, it's something to tell the world
because that means you've finished all of the course work.
But to not write your dissertation, it's a it's a
(05:44):
terrible waste but at this point in my life, I've
published so much. I have had already was quite a
productive career to go back and do that. And my
dissertation was approved the title I worked on it. There's
a big outline when of my advisers said, Carol, each
chapter could be a dissertation. But stubborn headed as I am,
I thought, I'm going to do it this way. So
(06:04):
the title of that unwritten dissertation was African Art Performing Objects.
Actually another title slaves to Sculpture, African art performing Objects.
So of course that mask was exactly saying you a
siren song. That's right, Yeah, that's lovely. Was there a
point at which you realize like African artists definitely the
(06:28):
thing for me? Was it something you ruminated over or
was there just something that drew it assure you to it?
And as a decisive moment said, the decisive moment was
when I was at the University of Iowa and my
professor at the time, Christopher roy I went. I remember
when I first met him. It was a little cocktail
party to introduce the new grad students to the faculty
(06:49):
and other students, and I, for some reason got into
a conversation with him about Burkina Fossio because that's one
of his areas of expertise. And I said the capital
of the city and I mispronounced it. I said Uga
doo Goo and he said, Carol, it's Waga douke. And
(07:10):
just a couple Just last week, I was talking to
Michael Rooks, my closest colleague at the High the curator
of Contemporary and Modern Art, and I was talking about
Waga Doog and it just made him. He did that laugh,
that snorting laugh. He didn't believe that it was really
a place. And I remember sending sending money to someone
who is my translator and who I commissioned work from
Jacoba Bonde, sculptor from the Bois region. And when I
(07:34):
went to Western Union, they said Burkina Fasso, that's not
a place. We can't send money there. And I said, no,
really it is. It is a place and we can't
send money there. So anyway, so when my professor Christopher Roy,
actually right in my first and second year there, he
was going to Burkina Faso every spring semester and some
(07:57):
of the grad students were complaining. I came here to
study with him, and he's not even here, and I said, no, no, no,
this is a very good thing. That means he's at
the forefront of this discipline and he is really one
of the world's experts on the art of Burkina. He's
published this gigantic book of the Tom Wheelock Collection, which
is the most important collection of art from Burkina in
(08:17):
the world. We've had works on loans from that collection,
but Chris roy would He was getting funding from National
Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and
even to this day he loves video. And that was
in the eighties and video was not so big as
it is now. And he was going to Burkina Faso
(08:40):
and attending masquerade performances throughout the whole nation and they're
more than sixty different ethnic groups there. So he's documented
the masquerade traditions of all of Verkina. And he would
come back with video and so in the classroom he
would be showing slides and then he would stop the
(09:03):
slide projector and show this unedited raw footage of masquerade
in Burkina, and it was larger than life. I was like, okay,
this is it. I gotta go to Burkino also, and
they have masquerade traditions that have wooden elements the masks
that we have in museums, but they also have a
type of mask that I just became enthralled by leaf masks.
(09:28):
They're they're a bit like nick Cave from the artists
and he's, okay, wonderful, I have to go ahead and
find that. So there, it's a very sacred form and
the it's a body total. Your body body is covered
with leaves, and that mask is the embodiment of the
(09:53):
spirit of dough and dough. It's all about regeneration. So
the masquerade performs Burkina is on the edge of the
Sarah Sahara, so the masquerade performs at the end of
the dry season before the next agricultural season begins. It's
considered the oldest and most sacred of the masquerade traditions.
(10:13):
And there's almost a competition between families the masks, the
families that used leaf masks as opposed to the newcomers
who use wood masks. So I I love both, but
I I'm actually initiated because the first time I went there,
I wanted to be close to the leaf masks and
they said no. Carol only for the initiated, so I
(10:34):
could watch the masquerade over the earthen wall of the
compound where I was staying with Mama du full Fauna
Muslim family. But I couldn't approach the masks, so that
was frustrating. It was frustrating that then I went back
to Burkina Falso, before I came to Atlanta in two
(10:54):
thousand one, I had finished my coursework at n y U,
I was teaching at Vasser, was teaching African Art at
Vassar and Introduction to World to Our Art at City
City College in Harlem, and somehow I managed to carve
out four weeks mid semester, Oh my goodness to go
to Burkina Fossa. I got substitutes to cover for me,
and I got a research grant faculty research grant from
(11:17):
Vassar to go to Burkina Fossa. And I went with
my best friend, one of my best friends still today,
Patricia Blanche, who has done a whole series of photographs
from that moment called Burkina Reflected large scale formal portraits,
a bit inspired by the work of Malik CD Bay
and say Kita. She actually had a show at was
what was the Ace Atlantic College of Art Gallery now
(11:39):
SCAD those large scale color portraits. Borkina reflected, But that
was just amazing. I was hadn't been there from eight
seven to two thousand one, and the people were like,
she came back, and she came back with photographs that
she talked when she was here in eight seven. So
I had pictures, small little pictures, but pictures of people
(11:59):
who had grown up, pictures of people who had died.
And that was partly what sort of inspired Patricia to
then start this photo series. And then we traveled back
to Burkina together and two thousand three and two thousand
five we haven't been back since, so but I would
love to return again. But then there are so many
other places in Africa I'd also like to go to.
(12:20):
So that was a long and winding road. Yeah, but
you ended up initiated, so you can get close to
those maps exactly. I forgot to say thank you. So
so when I went back with Patricia in two thousand two,
the leaf Masks were performing in another town and I said,
but I thought they could only you could only you
know be They said, no, no, no, Doe speaks all languages.
(12:45):
Anyone can come with two dough with a sort of ask. Gotcha.
So I had just applied for the job at the
High Museum. So my ask was see here the position
at the Hi Museum as cur water of African art.
So in order to do that, I had to make
a sacrifice to dough and part of that involved than
(13:08):
the being the masquerade being performed. So oh, how wonderful.
The only thing I wasn't able to wear red and
I was I had a red dress. They said no
where red dress is allowed, but I could wear my
lipstick well being initiated. But I just love the idea
of the spirit of regeneration. I mean that I could that.
And someone asked me, are you a Christian? I said,
(13:30):
I have another faith and it's more based on nature
and the spirit of regeneration. I'm a child of dope.
Oh that's lovely. Um. I want to switch gears a
little bit because I have heard you talk before about
the importance of education, uh and how it combats some
of these long held and very problematic ideas that people
(13:51):
have about African art and some very racist stereotypes. So
could you uh talk a little bit about the gap
that exists between those ideas that were planted in the
nineteenth century that really do a great disservice to African
art and the actual reality and sort of why that
gap exists. Yeah, absolutely, thank you so much. It's so
(14:12):
important and that's really one of the reasons why I
am a friend of mine. You know, before I came
here said she saw an announcement about the position curator
of African Art at the High and she said, that
would be an interesting job be in Atlanta and be
responsible for, you know, conveying the importance of African art
(14:33):
to the people of the city, of the region, and
then even beyond. But I was I had friends visiting
just a couple of months ago and went over to
the Center for Human insul Rights and right there at
the entrance, if you still see those TVs from the fifties,
that very powerful display, various people talking my white men
talking about various things, and one of them, the man
(14:54):
is saying, you know, Africa, they were savages, and you
know they're best off here. You know, the people of
the South were better to them than anything they knew
before they came here. And like, uh oh no, not quite.
So one of the very deepest stereotypes about Africa is
(15:16):
that and this was um Hegel, the German philosopher, that
Africa has no history because it's the spoken word that
is so highly valued r and the oral tradition which
even comes through in hip hop to this day. So
the misperception that Africa has no history because their history
(15:37):
isn't written is totally wrong. And also there are Islamic
records going way back in time. The High just recently
acquired a Koran that is written from tim Buck two,
the place of great scholarship from the eleventh to the
sixteenth century, then declined because of the shift of this
trans Saharan trade to the transatlantic trade. But tim Buck
(15:59):
two was so so so important and so history in
Arabic but also history handed down by word of mouth.
The High has a work that was relatively recently acquired.
When we acquired it, we didn't know that it's full importance.
And this has become my favorite work in the collection.
(16:22):
And it's actually I wrote about it for the Museum's
High Life magazine that the museum, the magazine that sent
out to all members. It's a sculpture that comes from
the region of the ancient city of jenn A. Jenny
is like is a sister city to timbuck To. Jenna
is believed to be the oldest city in Sub Saharan Africa.
(16:43):
So that's the reason where this work comes from. Jen
A is a UNESCO. The entire city is a World
Heritage Site because of the great mosque, the earthen mosque
that's at the scale of Notre Dame, and there's you
can go online. You can find wonderful videos, even in
New York Times video that talks about the importance of
this city. So that mosque is made out of red clay,
(17:07):
just like the terra cotta sculpture that we have in
the collection. Recently, we collaborated with Grady Hospital and we
took the sculpture over to Grady and did a CT
scan and then after that we sent small samples to
a lab at at Oxford and England. And we needed
needed to do that because a couple of European colleagues
(17:29):
of mine we're working on an article and they wanted
to include the high sculpture, but they would not include
it until we provided the CT scan and the t
L test to verify its authenticity. We did that. We
also got beautiful three D images of the work and grady,
it was so fun and I should shout out give
(17:50):
a shout out to my colleagues there Dr Malco and
Dr Fontaine. But facilitated by renee Stein, the object conservator
over at Emery and at the Carlos. Together we did
this CT scanning and that then we provided that information
(18:11):
to these two scholars. But this the TL test told
us that the work was created sometime between twelve fifteen
and fifteen fifteen, at the height of the Empire of Mali,
which was the West African empire that spread all the
way to the Atlantic and even as far in inland
as Burkina and Niger than one of the greatest empires
(18:32):
of that time, so founded by Sunjata. The Epic of
Sunjata is that the oral history that was only written
down relatively recently by a scholar from Guinea. And you
can read the Epic of Sunjata. When I taught at
City College in Harlem, it was required reading for all
press freshmen as world literature. That was the one that
(18:53):
was at the top of the list for Africa. Anyway,
the sculpture. Back to the sculpture, it's a fragment. But
it's an extraordinarily it's an extraordinary work that it's a
female torso wrapped in snakes, but it looks like a
dancing figure. It has so much movement, which is quite
(19:14):
unusual for an African sculpture. Another feature of the sculpture
that I always wondered about that there's it looks almost
like a mountain range of running vertically between the breasts,
and it's so anatomically incorrect. I thought, what is this?
So these two scholars have assembled a whole group of
(19:37):
works that are portraits of Soga Long so Go long
a s O g O l O and so Long
so Long was the mother of sun Jatta. A right,
we have a portrait of sin mother of sun Jata,
founder of the Mali Empire. And we know this because
(19:58):
that little projection between her breasts. There are other sculptures
that didn't share that same feature. And in the oral
history she went so she was a real woman. She
gave birth to Sungata. She became a mythical personality, and
one of her abilities was to shoot porson poison tipped
porcupine quills from her chest. Can do that, right? I
(20:22):
mean that acquire able skill exactly, and she also could
be exproud horns and become a buffalo woman. And you
can actually see her turn into a buffalo woman as
she comes out of a tree trunk in the future
film called cat Heritage of a Grio it is. We
(20:43):
just did an episode slightly different about Great Zimbabwe and
how that had been believed for a long time to
have been built by some other culture that exactly, no, no, no,
was not attributed to the people that actually built and
lived there for a long time. I'd love to go there.
It's on my bucket list, along with Labella and so
many other places. Perfect. We are next going to talk
(21:04):
about kind of how the layman can get they're in
into African art history. But first we're going to pause
and have a word from one of our fantastic sponsors.
So jumping back in, there are so many different styles
of art in African history, and I know for someone
(21:25):
who is not particularly familiar with it, it can be
a little overwhelming. So where do you start to educate
someone who's interested in African art art history but just
doesn't know where to begin. Come to the High Museum.
Not everybody's in Atlanta, because at the website. Yeah, or
go to any museum that has African art and look
(21:46):
at the collection and just go towards whatever draws you
in and then find out more about whatever that is
and then start from there. Just find your moment. Yeah,
you could even go to the Atlanta Airport and visit
it there love actually quite lovely sculpture collection. You could
or you could go. There's going to be an exhibition.
(22:06):
Can I give a plug to Savannah College of Art
in February is going to present the work of a
young artist named Omar Victor Diop And he's from Deaker
but moves around in the world, often in Paris. He'll
be here in Atlanta, which is extraordinary. And he has
done a whole series called it's called the Project Diaspora,
(22:30):
and he he their portraits self portraits, but he presents
himself as a historic figure. Oh I love it, but
with some like a soccer ball or something just to
disrupt that image. And I'm going to just read for
a moment about one of his works that I particularly love.
(22:52):
It's u portrait of a Prince from the Kingdom of
the Congo, which is well represent entered in the highest
collection Congo Art Congo with a k. You might remember
the Congo across the water show that was at the
Carter Center a couple of years ago. It was beautiful, amazing, amazing. Anyway,
this prince from the Kingdom of the Congo. So was
(23:14):
perhaps one of the earliest African leaders who wrote publicly
to protest protest colonial influences. Nikolau protest protested against Portuguese
commercial and political activity and military expansion by publishing a
letter in a Portuguese newspaper in Lisbon. His exact birthday
(23:35):
remains uncertain. Contemporary engravings of the Nicholas rather during his
visit in Lisbon in five suggests that he was then
perhaps fifteen to twenty years of age. Anyway, it's a wonderful,
glorious portrait of this prince from the Kingdom of the Congo.
And you'll be able to see it at SCAD in February.
(23:55):
Oh that sounds excellent, So if you're in Atlanta, go
see it. If you're not, go to your ZM and
find that one thing that catches your eye where there's
also I've been looking at Art News Africa Instagram feed fabulous.
I haven't followed it, but I will now. Yeah, it's
wonderful and it's such a you can see such a
(24:15):
broad range of work there now as a curator, which
you have been doing for quite some time. Now, what
are the biggest challenges that you personally face when you're
developing a collection or an exhibit that focuses on African art? Money?
Money always you need a budget to buy art, and
I've done really well also getting gifts. I had a
(24:38):
very strong network. I have a very strong network of
collectors across the nation and even in Europe who have
made gifts to the High Museum. So I've been able
to build a respectable collection, not so much through purchases
but through gifts. But museums, not only the High Museum,
but even the Met I think especially bef us of
(25:00):
their recent expansion and all the cost of that. Museums
are always in need of benefactors, and in this day
and age, new benefactors, the next generation. So I hope
in Atlanta, especially with Rand Suffolk in place as our
new director, we're reaching out out to community communities across
(25:22):
Atlanta in a way that we have never never really
done so thoroughly and deeply before. Well hopefully, I mean
we all dream of world where like art is always
funded and endowments are always good, and my position is endowed.
I do have another special inditiative endowment that provides some
(25:42):
funds for acquisitions, but that endowment is established to help
the High established regional leadership in African art. Funds can
be used for exhibitions, acquisitions, travel and research programming. So
you can imagine the pressure on those limited funds. So more,
if anyone would like to and make an endowment and
(26:04):
have a legacy the um SO and SO African Art
Endowment at the High Museum, they can join Fred and
Rita as a nice uh. And you wrote a book
titled African Art Portfolio and illustrated introduction masterpieces from the
eleventh to the twentieth centuries, and it touches a lot
on the use of art as a means of spiritual
(26:25):
communication with ancestors. Can you talk a little bit about
that and the important role of spirituality in African art. So,
I actually meant to go back and look at that
book because it's been so long since I wrote that book.
It was when I was at the Center for African
Art in New York and I was in charge of
the education program. I started out in cure toil at
(26:45):
the Center for African Art when it was into adjacent
townhouses at sixty eight in Park. Then we moved and
moved to Soho and somewhere in that time between eight
seven and ninety six, I became the I was in
charge of the education department. Then I switched back to curatorial.
But I wrote that book when I was ahead of
(27:06):
the education department, and so it's a very introductory publication
based on works previously previously exhibited at the Center for
African Art. And you can see this band eleventh to
the twentieth century. It's got to be But spirituality. One
of the shows that I worked in worked on and
that I'm sure is represented in that book was called
(27:27):
wild Spirits, Strong Medicine, African Art and the Wilderness. And
in terms of spirit spirituality in Africa, it's not just
one thing. It takes so many different forms. And that
Instagram feed I was just looking at it recently. There
was there was there's a fantastic little short video clip
(27:49):
of a cloth masquerade performing. It's a it's a made
out of cloth and when the dancer moves, it turns
into this big circle that like Spy World, moves all
across the dance space. And it's a festival that takes
place in Benin to this day, and it just took
place January ten, so I wish I had been there.
(28:10):
But and it's to honor ancestral spirits through cloth masquerade performance.
No museum does have on view and agung Cloth Masquerade
and the Gunging Masquerade Association it's a men's masquerade association
that honors ancestral spirits through cloth masquerade performance. So that's
just one example. But Wild Spirits Strong Medicine included a
(28:33):
whole entourage of masks from Burkina Fosso that are conceived
in part to harness the power of nature spirits to
the benefit of humankind. Lovely um. The other thing that
I want to talk about, and you kind of gave
me a nice intro at the very top, is a
(28:54):
little bit about the way African art, as she said,
you know, there's we sort of all come from there,
but we don't really think about how much African art
has really influenced global arts. Can you talk a little
bit about that? Absolutely, And of course everyone thinks of
Picasso first off, and we do have a wonderful mask
in the High Museum's collection. It's a recent acquisition, relatively
(29:17):
recent acquisition. It's made possible through the collector's Evening initiative.
It's a mask from the Penday region of Democratic Republic
of the Congo. Pende masquerade continues to the present. This
mask was probably created during the thirties, and it has
an extraordinarily distorted face that is black on one side
and white on the other, and so it's a very
(29:39):
abstract kind of work. And the famous famous exhibition that
was at the Museum of Modern Art and then I
think eighty four Primitivism. You might have the two volume
catalog in its common in many libraries because it was
a landmark exhibition and there's an image of this this
very mask, and they the author I remember, there were
(30:04):
so many different authors, but I think it's in the
chapter that William Ruben, the curator wrote about cites this
Pende mask as a source of inspiration to Picasso's Les
demoise l d'Avignon. But then another scholars stays, no, Pende
masks weren't yet in the these lum at that time,
and it was Picasso. There's famous quotes about from Coso
(30:27):
Picasso talking about his visit to these lam and he
was so so, so so struck by the African art
that he saw, and that was something that led to
Lay Demoiselle. But of course that's just that's early twentieth century. There.
I think I've become more and more interested in African
art and late and early twentieth century artists. When I
(30:54):
was in New York, I was particularly drawn to work
created by David Hammonds, and one of the works I
think was actually e inspired in part by an image
from my book The African Art Portfolio. It's one of
my favorite masks in the world. It's a mask gelida.
Mask Galada, like a gong, is a Yorba men's masquerade tradition,
(31:15):
but it is for the ancestors to honor the ancestral spirits.
A um gellida is to honor women. So there's image
of what I think is the most beautiful gelida in
the world that I had hoped to acquire for the
high but when it's sold at auction, the estimate was
I think one fifty fifty thousand. It went for much
(31:41):
more than that. I couldn't have even reached that mark
just pin money, and I think it's actually going to
be somewhere in Qatar. Finished one of those museums. Glorious,
sublime work of art. But David Hammond's roughly at the
time that my portfolio was published, and I shared that
book with him, he created a work called Freudian Slip.
(32:04):
And he comes from a family, he had had six sisters,
and he put a woman slip, one of those old
fashioned slips with the little pleated skirt sort of translucent pink.
He put a Gallada mask that he found, I think
at the time it was Chelsea Market was telling, you know,
sort of replica objects. So he got a Galladay mask
(32:27):
and he put it under the slip of the skirt
in this slip, and he called it Freudian Slip. And
to me it's just one of the most extraordinary works.
But you know, we already mentioned Nick Cave. There are
so many artists, but even young, young artists in Africa today,
in cities all across the continent. They're creating work that
does I mean sometimes not at all. Sometimes they're more
(32:50):
engaged by other ways of making art, but sometimes they do.
Like Omar Vic Grdop, he's referring to the bast past
while he creates temporary work. And I imagine there are
a lot of artists that don't even realize that the
influence has trickled down to them and their work, not
just in Africa, but throughout the globe. We just had
(33:11):
a visitor, a student who's finishing her PhD at Berkeley,
writing about the work of Howard, Dean and Pendell. And
she's an artist whose work is represented in the Highest Collection.
She had a show at Spellman and spoke recently. But
I I was just with this visitor looking at one
of her dot paintings that is in the Highest Collection.
It's a small work. It looks like an abstract, sort
(33:32):
of minimalist color field work. She took paper, punched circles
and in a very careful way sort of sprinkled them
and secured them. So it's it's a it's a work
on paper, but three dimensional, absolutely amazing. And she talks
about one of the sources of inspiration for that work
was African bead work. So it's not only mask but
(33:55):
you can find so many, so many different ways to
approach African art and being inspired by it. I love it. Uh,
we are gonna once again, pause for a brief word
from a sponsor before we come back and finish our
chat with Carol. So hang in, we'll be right back
with you, okay. So one thing that I had to
(34:18):
wonder because I think when their areas that maybe people
don't always know about, there's always a moment, like a
light bulb moment or a moment of surprise. So what
do you find surprises people the most when they start
to really learn about the very rich and broad spectrum
of African art and its history. You know, I think
(34:39):
that's something that artists like Ellen not swe have achieved
in a way that is most remarkable. It's The High
has one of his sometimes referred to as metalcloth sculptures,
and it's on view in the African Art Gallery. When
we first acquired it, it was presented on the Skyway
(35:01):
Gallery of Contemporary Art, which is what he would prefer.
But when people see that work, if you've never seen
a work by Ellen not Sue, it's kind of like
a magnet. It just draws people in and they wonder,
you know, how is this made? It's so extraordinary and
he's become now the High acquired the magnificent work that
(35:23):
we have by l before. He's skyrocketed to international art stardom.
So now his work is everywhere and just very widely known.
But for people who have never seen it. When you
see a work by Ellen at SWI for the first time,
it's it's one of those moments of awe. Yeah, is
(35:45):
that it Usually people just become odd when they realize
what's there to be explored and discovered. Yeah, and the
accomplishment of it, because it's so ingenious, so simple, and
it's there. You know, he's been on an Art twenty one.
You can just google L E L short for Emmanuel Anatsui.
I won't spell the name, but you can find it
(36:06):
and put it in show now, okay. And he has
a whole workshop of assistants working with him now and
they produced He prefers to make really large works. And
at the Venice B and L. The same year that,
the year after the High acquired the work that we have,
he had a gigantic metal cloth sculpture on the facade
(36:27):
of the Fortuny Palace. But he's done equally as large
scale works at various as on the facades of various
museums in London, Berlin and that's he likes to create
the gigantic works because they even convey a greater sense
of movement than the more small scale work that we
(36:49):
have in the highest collection. But they and that's for
him almost a metaphor of metaphor for sort of how
all human being sort of long for a sense of
freedom and mobility. He never wants to work to look
like it's pinned down. That it should convey convey a
(37:11):
sense of movement. It's the universal right. And you kind
of touched on this when you did your sneaky jump
around earlier. But if there were one thing that you
just wish that everybody could magically know and understand about
African art and its history, what would it be That
it's not only for yeah, people of African ancestry or
(37:32):
for African people, it's it's a to me African art.
And this is maybe I think about when I was
a small child living in Minnesota, and I would go
bicycling bicycling with my friends and brother and sister and cousins,
and we would bicycle to this little farm where there
was a well and it was really cool, delicious fresh water.
(37:56):
And to me, African art is like a it was
a fresh it was a spring. It's a well that
will you'll never make it to the end, so it's
never boring. There's always something new to learn, because of
course Africa is such a gigantic continent with such a
rich history and so many diverse artistic traditions, and it's
(38:17):
open for all. I love it. That's so beautiful. And
I'm warning you now of the danger that I will
just be lurking at the High looking for you at
all times. Carol, thank you so much for spending time
with us. We're so spoiled. Thank you, Holly, Oh, it's
such a delight. We will include in our show notes
all of the information about UH, the incredible collection that
(38:38):
Carol has put together at the High Museum of Art,
as well as some of the key points she hit
on in her answers and discussion UH, and then we
will wrap up with a bit of listener mail. I
so love and was terribly charmed by her comparison of
(39:00):
African art to a never ending well of refreshing spring water.
Thank you so much again to Carol for sharing her
story and her knowledge with us. We'll have links in
the show notes to the Highest Collection as well as
the Instagram account that she mentioned in the interview. Yeah,
she was just lovely and I she very sweetly when
we had wrapped and said, oh, you should come down
(39:20):
any time. And I was like, Carol, this is like
feeding a stray cat. I will just show up at
the museum daily and be like, Hi, would you like
to spend time with me and tell me about everything
in the collection. Uh. She was wonderful and terribly gracious.
So thank you, thank you, thank you. Uh. And now
I have some fun listener mail, and I'll keep it
short because that interview is a little lengthy. Uh. This
is all from our listener Hannah, who has been traveling
(39:42):
in Scotland, and she very sweetly sent us four postcards. Uh.
One is Sterling Castle, which is a lovely picture. Another
is Dune Castle, which is where Money Python filmed bits
of Holy Grail. Uh. And this lovely then Uh she
sent a really lovely picture of a Highland address suit,
(40:06):
which she said, in all honesty, this just seemed like
the most Scottish possible image to send Holly, which is accurate.
And the last one was really really cool. She writes.
These are some of the tiny dolls and coffins found
by schoolboys at Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. No one is
sure who made them or why they exist. My favorite
theory is that they were made to provide earthly bodies
(40:26):
for the seventeen victims of William Burg and William Hair.
So thank you so much, Hannah for all of these
beautiful postcards. Again, I know I always say it, I'm
saying it again. I'm always so honored that people would
take time out of their vacations to think of us.
So I cannot appreciate our listeners more. And when you
do that, it, uh, it's very touching. So if you
(40:47):
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast. At how stuff works dot com, you
can find us across the spectrum of social media as
missed in History, which means Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumbler, Pinterest. Uh.
Come and see all of our social things. We will
chat with you. You You can also visit our parents site,
which is how stuff Works dot com. You can look
(41:08):
up Arn't there, but you could look up almost anything
else you could think of and many many results will
come to you with lots and lots of information. You
can also visit us at missed in history dot com,
where we have a complete archive of every episode of
the show that has ever existed, as well as show
notes on any of the episodes Tracy and I have
worked on. So we hope you come in and indulge
in all of these things and visit us at missed
(41:30):
in history dot com and how stuff Works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics, because
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