Press release

Nok. Origin of African Sculpture An exhibition of the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung realized in cooperation with Frankfurt’s Goethe University

30 October 2013 to 23 February 2014 Press preview: Tuesday, 29 October 2013, 11 a.m. Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung

(Frankfurt am Main, 23 September 2013) In its special exhibition “Nok. Origin of African Sculpture”, on show from 30 October 2013 to 23 February 2014, the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung presents spectacular finds of the more than two-thousand-year-old Nok culture in Sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. The over one hundred sculptures and fragments recovered by the archaeologists of Frankfurt’s Goethe University will be displayed in a dialogue with contemporary works from Ancient Egypt and Greek-Roman Antiquity from the collections of the Liebieghaus. This pointed confrontation thematizes the major conflict about the radically changed understanding of art in the twentieth century by spanning from Europe’s figurative art on the one hand to the free forms of so- called primitive art on the other.

The Nok terracotta figures rank among the earliest examples of African sculpture and were discovered in more than two-hundred excavation sites in West African Nigeria within the past eight years. The exhibition of the expressive sculptures now presented to the world public for the first time has been prepared in a joint effort by Frankfurt’s Goethe University and the Liebieghaus. The elaborately restored reddish figures are confronted with about sixty artworks from Egypt in Late Antiquity and Classical Greece that date from the same period. While the exchange between these cultures was blocked by the Sahara two thousand years ago, the show at the Liebieghaus offers the opportunity to compare the entirely independently created Nok sculptures with the art of contemporary cultures around the Mediterranean. The Liebieghaus exhibition also highlights the research results of this extraordinarily successful long-term excavation project and, besides the sculptures, comprises everyday objects such as earthenware vessels, stone tools, and jewelry, thus conveying a comprehensive picture of this remarkable West African archaeological culture.

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The research and exhibition project has been sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and received additional support from the Julius Berger International GmbH.

The Nok sculptures are presented in the rooms of the Liebieghaus collection dedicated to Ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt together with artworks of these cultures from the same period. The peculiarity characterizing the Nok culture’s stylized representations of animals and human beings are triangular eyes whose pupils are suggested by indentations. Individual features like beards, jewelry, or extravagant hairstyles or headdresses emphasize the expressive figures’ elaborate execution. Shaped from coarse-grained clay, the sculptures were covered with slip which has only survived in a few instances. Human beings are the main subject; occasionally we also come upon animals ‒ especially snakes and lizards ‒ as well as chimeras, i.e. beings half animal and half human. Some objects provide us with unusual information on the Nok culture: one relief, for example, shows a man beating the drum on which he sits. This item presented in the exhibition is the oldest testimony of music in Sub-Saharan Africa. The non-literate culture, which originated around 1500 BC, flourished, and vanished around the year 0, remains an enigma in spite of new insights. Suppositions concerning the function and context of the excavated terracotta figures necessarily remain hypothetical. The Frankfurt team’s research shows that the sculptures were probably used for a variety of purposes, some of which were associated with ritual contexts such as ancestral worship and healing practices. All figures were broken when found. We know of only a single complete figure excavated to date.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century African art was discovered in Europe together with other abstract forms of early cultures. It was Paris which became the center of this new esteem. Protagonists of Modernism such as Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner found the legitimation for their formal break with a previously mainly realistic figurative art in the indigenous art of the preindustrial worlds of Africa and Oceania. The pointed confrontation in the Liebieghaus also sketches this major conflict about the radically renewed twentieth-century understanding of art: the mimetically figurative art of Europe exemplified by the works of Ancient Egypt and Greek-Roman Antiquity on the one hand, and the free forms of so-called primitive art on the other.

The research results from the excavations carried out by a team of archaeologists from Frankfurt’s Goethe University around Prof. Dr. Peter Breunig in Nigeria since 2005 are comprehensively presented in the Lecture Hall in the basement of the Liebieghaus. Research activities have focused on a core area measuring 15 × 20 kilometers. This area is to be extended until 2020. During their annual seasons in the field, which last for several months, the researchers from Frankfurt collaborate with the Nigerian federal authorities in charge of archaeological projects as well as two of the country’s universities. Thanks to local informants the team discovered numerous outstanding and remarkable terracotta sculptures in the past years. It was in the 1940s that a Nok sculpture drew the attention of

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Bernard Fagg, a British archaeologist. The first figurines were discovered by accident while mining tin. By the late 1970s, Fagg had assembled a total of more than 150 fragments from Nok figures with the help of miners. The name of the culture derives from the little village Nok located near the site of the first discovery.

The exhibition also deals with treasure hunting as well as the illegal trade in and the forging of Nok sculptures. Original terracotta items will be presented next to faked pieces and copies. Faced with the international art market’s steadily growing interest in African art and the top prices achieved for Nok terracotta figures, dealers have increasingly come to organize illegal searches for such items, their excavation, and ways of selling them abroad. Nok sites have been systematically looted by treasure hunters for decades. Numerous objects seem to have come on the Western art market through these channels. In addition, countless forgeries and copies have found their way into the art market and into museum collections. The Nok sculptures presented in Frankfurt, however, are genuine beyond any doubt. After having been presented to the public in the Liebieghaus for the first time, the sensational finds with their outstanding free forms will return to Nigeria to be shown there.

The exhibition “Nok. Origin of African Sculpture” in the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung is realized in collaboration with Frankfurt’s Goethe University and supported through loans from the National Commission for Museums and Monuments of Nigeria. The show will be presented under the patronage of Dr. Norbert Lammert, President of the German Federal Diet.

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Nok. Origin of African Sculpture

Curator: Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Brinkmann (Head of the Collection of Antiquities, Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung) Exhibition architecture: Karsten Weber, architect, Düsseldorf

Catalogue: A comprehensive catalogue will be published by Africa Magna Verlag to accompany the exhibition. Edited by Peter Breunig, the catalogue comprises contributions by Christina Beck, Peter Breunig, Vinzenz Brinkmann, Manfred K. H. Eggert, Angela Fagg Rackham, Gabriele Franke, Birgit Frohreich, Musa Oluwaseyi Hambolu, Alexa Höhn, Joseph F. Jemkur, Tanja M. Männel, Jasmin Munir, Klaus-Peter Nagel, Katharina Neumann, Umaru Yusuf Potiskum, Stephan Ritter, Nicole Rupp, and Andreas Zimmermann. German edition, c. 292 pages, c. 170 color and 55 black-and-white illustrations as well as 51 plates, 39.80 euros.

General guided tours through the exhibition: Wednesdays 5:00 p.m., Sundays 3:00 p.m.

Accompanying program: The presentation in the Liebieghaus will be accompanied by a lecture held by Prof. Dr. Peter Breunig, Head of the Department “Archaeology and Archaeobotany of Africa” at Frankfurt’s Goethe University, on Thursday, 5 December 5 2013 at 7:00 p.m. Under the title “On the Artists’ Trail. Archaeological investigations into Nigeria’s Nok culture,” Peter Breunig will give a survey of the substantial progress made in the excavations undertaken in recent years and describe the necessary methods and special approaches in archaeology. Free admission, booking required: +49 (0)69-650049-110; [email protected]

Press preview: Tuesday, 29 October 2013, 11:00 a.m. Venue: Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Schaumainkai 71, 60596 Frankfurt am Main Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Fri–Sun 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., Thur 10:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m., Mon closed. Exhibition dates: 30 October 2013 ‒ 23 February 2014 Information: www.liebieghaus.de, [email protected], phone: +49(0)69-650049-0, fax: +49(0)69- 650049-150 Admission: 9 euros, reduced 7 euros, family ticket 16 euros; free admission for children up to twelve years of age

Project partners: National Commission for Museums and Monuments (Nigeria), University of Jos (Nigeria), Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Afrikaforschung Sponsored by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft With support from: the Julius Berger International GmbH, the William Buller Fagg Charitable Trust, the Friends of the Goethe University, and the Romano-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz

Press office: Axel Braun (head), Silke Janßen, Karoline Leibfried Städel Museum, Dürerstraße 2, 60596 Frankfurt, phone: +49(0)69-605098-234, fax: +49(0)69-605098- 188, [email protected]

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