Art of Central Africa at the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Art of Central Africa at the Indianapolis Museum of Art Constantine Petridis with Kirstin Krause Gotway Unless otherwise noted, all photographs courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields In honor of Theodore Celenko accomplishments of its curator of textile and fashion arts, Niloo Paydar, the museum also has a strong reputation for its compre- n terms of arts and entertainment, Indianapolis, Indiana, hensive collection of African textiles, administratively housed in is known for its automobile race, its International Violin another department. Competition, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art at It has often been said that Eiteljorg regularly benefited from the Newfields (IMA). African art scholars and aficiona- advice of Indiana University professor Roy Sieber (1923–2001), dos alike associate the city and its museum specifically a leading authority in the field and an influential mentor to with businessman and philanthropist Harrison Eiteljorg many. But the true nature of Sieber’s role in forming the Eiteljorg (1903–1997), the namesake of the museum’s suite of African art gal- Collection has not been fully studied, and therefore it cannot leriesI (Fig. 1). To this day, his vast collection, mostly donated in be ascertained which acquisitions Sieber actually supported. 1989, constitutes the bulk of the museum’s more than 1,700 African However, as he himself pointed out in an article on the collection holdings, making it among the largest of its kind in the country and in this journal, Celenko did impact “Eiteljorg’s orientation and one of the few truly encyclopedic African collections anywhere in level of seriousness” (Celenko 1981: 32). From his beginnings as the world (Figs. 2–3).1 Thanks to his vision and the efforts of the Eiteljorg’s private curator in 1978 until his retirement on March museum’s longtime (and now emeritus) curator Theodore (Ted) 31, 2009, after nearly twenty years as the Indianapolis Museum Celenko, it collected and exhibited the arts of northern Africa and of Art’s curator of the Arts of Africa, the South Pacific, and the contemporary African art long before many other museums or Americas, Celenko steered the collection to its current consti- private collectors (see jegede 2000). As a result, these two areas, tution.2 Still, many important works in the museum’s African as well as the often equally underrated arts of eastern and south- collection pre- and postdate the Eiteljorg gifts, and some of the ern Africa, are exceptionally well represented. Due largely to the collection’s most prized possessions were purchased during the last decade before Celenko retired, including the ex–Susan Vogel Senufo display figure (1999.31; see Robbins and Nooter 1989: 121, Constantine Petridis (PhD—Art History, Ghent University, Bel- gium, 1997) joined the Art Institute of Chicago in November 2016 as no. 169; Lee 2005: 70) and the ex–Carlo Monzino Songye power curator of African art and department chair of the Arts of Africa and the figure (2005.21), which I discuss later. Americas, after fourteen years as curator of African art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. From July 1, 2014, to September 30, 2015, and again RANKING THE IMA’S AFRICAN ART COLLECTION from January 1 to June 30, 2017, he served as Mellon Curator-at-Large My impetus for writing this essay was my engagement as the at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. A consulting editor to Mellon Curator-at-Large for African Art at the IMA from July African Arts, he recently published Luluwa: Central African Art Be- 1, 2014, to October 1, 2015. Appointed by Charles L. Venable, tween Heaven and Earth (Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2018). cpetridis@ the Indianapolis museum’s Melvin & Bren Simon Director and artic.edu CEO, I served as one of six nonresident curators of various art Kirstin Krause Gotway (MA—Art History, University of Chicago, historical specialties in this ambitious and innovative curatorial 2008) served as curatorial assistant to the Mellon Curators-at-Large at pilot program supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields from 2011 to 2017. In which was initiated in November 2011 and ended in June 2017. 2014, she co-authored with Amy G. Poster “Lockwood de Forest’s Wall: Through the Mellon curatorial program, the IMA was able to When India Came to Indianapolis” in the July–August issue of Fine Art draw on the expertise of specialists in areas where in-house Connoisseur. In August 2017 she began PhD studies in art history at curatorial oversight was lacking, including Chinese, South the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Asian, Native American, African, American, and Japanese art. 34 african arts WINTER 2018 VOL. 51, NO. 4 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00431 by guest on 29 September 2021 1 Harrison Eiteljorg amidst his African collection at his Indianapolis residence, c. 1985. 2 The display of works of Central African art in the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s former African art galleries as conceived by its now retired curator Ted Celenko, January 2012. 3 A view of the display devoted to “power,” one of seven thematic galleries in the current Eiteljorg suite, as conceived by then visiting guest curator Elizabeth Morton, May 2012. The textiles and some of the other works on view have been rotated off since this photograph was taken. All Mellon curators, typically hired on a rotating basis for one- In my opinion, out of more than 1,700 items, the number of year tenures, have benefited from the expert assistance of Kirstin truly excellent or extraordinary works, which I have labeled as of Krause Gotway, now undertaking PhD studies in art history at the A rank, is limited to perhaps twenty-five objects, a dozen of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. which are masterworks of so-called classical or historical African In line with a museum-wide assessment project, chief among art. About 260 of the 1,700 are I believe of the B rank, denoting a the tasks assigned to me were the ranking of the collection quality continuum that ranges from good to very fine. Of course, according to quality and the updating of catalogue data accom- this should not come as a surprise if one takes into account the panying the works identified as of the highest ranks, to support donor’s collecting practice and what I would label his omnivorous further research and the ultimate publication of a scholarly cata- and rather compulsive collecting habits. Indeed, it is known that logue of collection highlights. On a more practical level, ranking Harrison Eiteljorg—whose donation of nearly 1,200 works to the the collection, following a predetermined system of criteria for IMA constitutes 70% of its entire African collection—purchased quality and excellence, would also help determine which objects the majority of what he owned in bulk and mostly from African might be removed from the galleries and ultimately considered dealers who paid him annual visits in Indianapolis and ensured for deaccessioning.3 However, early in my involvement with the that during a given year his collection would grow by the hun- collection I concluded that its quality is quite uneven, due to its dreds. While this situation surely contributed to the collection’s size, scope, origins, and development. My preliminary assess- comprehensive and encyclopedic character, it also explains its ment, which will need to be confirmed by an independent second inconsistency. Indeed, it appears that Eiteljorg was more concerned opinion and maybe even a third opinion, has led to a hierarchical about the quantity of his African holdings than about their quality. distinction into four quality levels from A to D. VOL. 51, NO. 4 WINTER 2018 african arts 35 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00431 by guest on 29 September 2021 | FIFTEEN CENTRAL AFRICAN HIGHLIGHTS Starting in northwestern Congo, Figure 5 is a face mask that has This brief survey primarily functions as a prelude to the much- been tentatively attributed to the Ngbaka. In addition to a number needed updated and in-depth analysis of the museum’s rich and of other works illustrated in this essay, this mask—published in varied collection, ideally in the format of a volume that assem- François Neyt’s Arts traditionnels et histoire au Zaïre (1981: 22, fig. bles specialists’ viewpoints through extensive entries on single 1.3)—was purchased by Eiteljorg from California-based Belgian objects. While there are various areas of the IMA’s African collec- dealer Jacques Hautelet (1931–2014) on June 8, 1983. Interestingly, tion that also merit attention, partly because of my own personal in the museum files, on the back of a studio photo of the mask interest and expertise, I focus here on a number of key works of is a handwritten note dated June 1980 by the famed Belgian art- the A and B ranks from present-day Democratic Republic of the ist and African art collector Jean [Willy] Mestach (1926–2014), Congo and adjacent regions, although there are other areas of the stating that he owned this sculpture in the 1950s and sold it to museum’s African collection that are equally worthwhile.4 The fellow Belgian collectors Paul and Luisa Muller-Vanisterbeek fact that many of these objects have been featured in a number in the 1960s. Although most masks from the Ubangi region in of publications, including several by Ted Celenko and the ency- northwestern Congo are attributed to the Ngbaka, they may in clopedic African Art in American Collections by Warren Robbins and Nancy Ingram Nooter, may suggest that they are in fact gen- erally considered to be among the highlights of the IMA’s African art collection.

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