Sacred Africa II

Works from the Collections of Cirque du Soleil, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Redpath Museum, McGill University

November 19, 2008 to January 3, 2011

Okouyi Danse Mask

In June 2006, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts presented art from the African continent in an exhibition of outstanding works from the collection of Guy Laliberté. Sacred Africa I, the result of a unique partnership, featured a selection of works from three Montreal collections – university, fine arts and corporate – McGill University’s Redpath Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Cirque du Soleil.

Opening on November 19, 2008, Sacred Africa II will present a new selection of major works primarily from Laliberté’s collection, illustrating the artistic approaches of other peoples of West Africa and Equatorial and Central Africa. Sacred Africa II: Works from the Collections of Cirque du Soleil, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Redpath Museum, McGill University brings together forty-eight works, sculptures, masks and objects, in the new, more spacious galleries that will now be devoted to African art.

“The Museum is pleased to partner with Cirque du Soleil, through whose generosity Museum visitors will be able to continue discovering the diversity and wealth of artistic expression of the peoples of Africa. These new galleries will be devoted to African art, with a renewed and enriched presentation. This project is part of the future reinstallation of our entire permanent collection,” said Nathalie Bondil, Director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

The principal partner for these galleries of African art, Cirque du Soleil, is lending thirty-nine works that will be on public display for the first time. Over the past ten years, the Cirque’s founder and CEO, Guy Laliberté, has assembled a remarkable collection of representative classic works from sub-Saharan Africa, acquired from leading European and American collections. The sculptures were created in the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Of particular note are the magnificent Okouyi Dance Mask and very rare Ngulu Reliquary Figure from Gabon, as well as the Niembo Ancestral Bust, a true masterpiece, and an outstanding Anthropomorphic Dagger from Congo.

This time, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is presenting two works from its collection, including a new acquisition, a very fine Buti Male Figure from the Teke culture (Democratic Republic of Congo), in all likelihood representing an ancestor. This acquisition attests to the Museum’s renewed interest in its collection of African art; the first works in this collection entered the Museum in 1940 through the efforts of F. Cleveland Morgan, an enlightened amateur and Curator of Decorative Arts at the Museum from 1916 to 1962. It is a very rare N’duleri Male Figure, also on display in the new galleries.

The Redpath Museum has loaned three works from Central Africa: two Nkishi figures and a Prestige Staff. Its collection includes works from Congo and Angola, collected during the nineteenth century. Some works are on loan from private collectors.

Also on display is a contemporary work by Arman (1928-2005). This famous French New Realist sculptor was also a collector of African art. More than ten years ago, at an exhibition at the Museum of African Art in New York, Laliberté was deeply moved by a beautiful accumulation of Kota reliquaries created by Arman. A more recent work by Arman, Pearl Stringers (2002), has been loaned by Corice Arman and serves as a counterpoint to the older works, as well as a nod to the world of the circus, with its profusion of multicoloured masks.

The layout of these new galleries was designed by Christiane Michaud.

This presentation of African art, like the Museum’s entire permanent collection, is free at all times for all visitors.

 

Free Free Admission
Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion
Level 1

 

GABON, NGOUNIE VALLEY; Punu; Okouyi Danse Mask; Early 20th c.; Bois de fromager enduit de kaolin; The Guy Laliberté / Cirque du Soleil Collection; Photo Hughes Dubois, Paris-Bruxelles