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Crosses from Ethiopia at the Dallas Museum of Art an Overview

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Crosses from Ethiopia at the Dallas Museum of Art an Overview Crosses from Ethiopia at the Dallas Museum of Art An Overview Jacopo Gnisci all photos courtesy of the Dallas Museum of Art except where otherwise noted arried in procession, placed at the top of a The aim of this article is to take a step in this direction by church to mark the landscape, held by a priest offering an overview of an extensive collection of Ethiopian to bestow blessings, or worn around the neck crosses at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). In 2016, thanks for protection and to assert identity, the cross, to a collaboration between the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art in all its manifestations, has been for centu- History (EODIAH) and the DMA, I was invited to take a closer ries a ubiquitous symbol in the daily and look at this collection, which had received some attention in the religious life of Christian Ethiopians.1 Thanks to the publication literature but had not yet been systematically investigated. The of catalogs, articles, and books, the organization of exhibitions, collection includes 258 items:5 178 hand crosses;6 8 processional C 7 8 9 anthropological research, and the study of literary sources, our crosses; 5 metal prayer-stick finials; and 67 pectoral crosses. As knowledge of Ethiopian crosses has improved considerably since it is obviously not possible to analyze each item in a paper of this Eine Moore’s pioneering work on the subject (1971; 1973). length, the focus will be on some of its highlights. However, the study of Ethiopian crosses is still very much in The DMA’s collection of crosses is one of the largest outside its early stages. In particular, the approach to dating Ethiopian of Ethiopia. To put it in perspective, the National Museum of crosses has seen little development, and the criteria one must African Art at the Smithsonian Institution (Kotz 1999: 159) owns adopt are still those first clearly outlined by Moore.2 Inscriptions a total of sixty-six such items (fifteen hand crosses; forty-three providing reliable dating evidence for Ethiopian crosses are pectoral crosses; four processional crosses; and four prayer stick rare—especially on pieces that are presumed to predate the fif- finials) whereas the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD teenth century—and not always original, forcing us to rely, in (Horowitz 2001) has seventeen (three hand crosses; eight pro- most cases, on stylistic, morphological, and paleographic evi- cessional crosses; and six pectoral crosses). Both museums also dence. Taken individually, these three strands of evidence are not own other objects, such as scrolls, icons and manuscripts, which always reliable,3 but in combination they can allow us to date a are not present in the DMA’s collection. Several other museums cross on firmer grounds. in the United States have Ethiopian crosses. The largest of which Unfortunately, few Ethiopian crosses can be dated with con- I am aware is the Portland Art Museum in Portland, OR, which fidence.4 For this reason it is important to document, catalogue, has 344 crosses that were examined in a preliminary fashion by and study the thousands of crosses scattered across Ethiopia’s Perczel (1981). Another large collection is that of the Brooklyn many monasteries to identify examples that can be dated with Museum in New York, which owns eighty-nine crosses.10 Most some certainty and thus, eventually, enable us to provide a more institutions, however, only have a small number of pieces. reliable framework for investigating those examples that cur- In this respect, worthy of mention are the collections of the rently pose difficulties to Ethiopianist art historians. As argued Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (LaGamma 2004), the elsewhere for the study of Ethiopian manuscripts (Gnisci 2017), Newark Musuem in Newark, NJ,11 the Yale University Art Gallery the cataloging effort should also include the many collections of in New Haven, CT, and the Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, Ethiopian crosses in European and American museums. FL (Cooksey 2016: 73–77), among others. The history of how such a large number of Ethiopian crosses Jacopo Gnisci is a researcher at the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian came to be acquired by the DMA has been presented elsewhere Studies, University of Hamburg. He has published numerous studies on (Walker 2009: 264–66), but it is worthwhile to recapitulate that Christian Ethiopian art and collaborated with several institutions in- information here.12 Between 1964 and 1967, Dr. Kenneth R. cluding the Dallas Museum of Art, the Apostolic Vatican Library, and Redden (d. 1998), who taught law at the University of Virginia, the Bodleian Library. [email protected] lived in Ethiopia as a Fulbright professor. He was also at this 48 african arts WINTER 2018 VOL. 51, NO. 4 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00432 by guest on 30 September 2021 1 A liturgical wooden hand cross from the collection exhibit- In 1966, three crosses from the collection were displayed, along ed at the Musée Dynamique in Dakar, Senegal in 1966. 19th–20th century; 43.1 cm x 20.4 cm with a dozen other works from Ethiopia, in an exhibition of Dallas Museum of Art, coll. no. 1991.352.20 African art organized by the Musée Dynamique in Dakar and the Grand Palais in Paris (M’veng et al. 1966: 111–14). The exhibition 2 One of two wooden hand crosses from the collection exhibited at the Musée Dynamique in Dakar, Senegal in 1966 included loans from several US collectors and museums, includ- 19th–20th century; 40 cm x 19.3 cm ing the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Dallas Museum of Art, coll. no. 1991.352.16 Cambridge, MA; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Museum of 3 One of the oldest metal hand crosses in the collection Primitive Art in New York; and the National Museum of African 15th–16th century; 29.8 cm x 10.1 cm Art (Biro 2015). Redden and his wife, Dr. Hebe Redden, were Dallas Museum of Art, coll. no. 1991.352.64 listed among the Ethiopian lenders (M’veng et al. 1966: 171). The exhibition included coll. nos. 13 (Fig. 1), 16 (Fig. 2), and a third hand cross that cannot be identified. Interestingly, the catalogue indicates that coll. no. 16 came from Goğğam, which suggests that Dr. Redden may have acquired at least some of the crosses time part of a team of American and continental law professors in this region of Ethiopia. The entire collection was subsequently invited by Emperor Haile Selassie to establish the country’s first displayed at the University of Virginia in 1972. Faculty of Law at the Haile Selassie I University in Addis Ababa In the spring of 1991, Redden and his wife decided to donate (Redden 1968: ix–xi). During his stay, Dr. Redden acquired a col- the entire collection to St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, lection of Ethiopian crosses, although no records survive of the TX, where Redden had been a visiting lecturer for several years. objects’ provenance.13 The president of St. Mary’s University, the Rev. Father John J. At the time, because Ethiopia lacked an antiquities protection Moder, accepted the gift in writing, but he soon began to think law, Redden volunteered to draft such a law at the emperor’s that a broader public would be able to access the crosses if they request. According to an anecdote related by Redden, when he were placed in a well-known museum. Thus, the Reddens and presented the proposed legislation to Haile Selassie, the emperor Father Moder asked Louise Cantwell, vice president for institu- observed that Redden had put an effective date of one month tional advancement and general counsel at Our Lady of the Lake after his own departure from Ethiopia in the draft—to which University, to find a new home for the collection.15 Redden replied that he had done so because he hoped to take Several museums expressed an interest, but the works were his collection of crosses back to the United States, giving the two eventually given to the DMA for several reasons, including the men a good laugh. The emperor did allow him to take the crosses fact that it already possessed a large collection of African art back, expressing the hope that he would eventually leave them to (Walker 2009). In turn, Dr. Anne Bromberg, curator of ancient a public institution in order to allow scholars and visitors to learn and Asian art at the DMA, and Dr. Richard Brettell, then director more about the culture of Ethiopia.14 of the museum, who were involved in the acquisition, believed VOL. 51, NO. 4 WINTER 2018 african arts 49 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00432 by guest on 30 September 2021 | 4 A late 15th- or early 16th-century portrait of St. Ezra shown holding a cross with a cloth attached to its bottom loop in a manuscript from the Gundä Gunde monastery. Photo: courtesy of Michael Gervers and the DEEDS Projects 5 A portrait of Habtä Śəllase shown holding a cross similar to the one in the collection of the DMA from the same manuscript as Figure 4. Photo: courtesy of Michael Gervers and the DEEDS Projects that the Ethiopian crosses would comple- ment the museum’s existing collections and serve as a bridge towards the local African American community.16 In 1992, the DMA organized an instal- lation to present the entire collection to the public and invited Csilla F. Perczel to give a lecture on Ethiopian crosses and to have a better look at the collection, which she had only seen in photographs.17 However, this did not lead to the publica- tion of a catalogue, and consequently all the objects in the collection were dated, without detailed investigation, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, and the matter received limited attention thereafter.
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