"Exhibiting the Sacred: The Altar as Museum, the Museum as the Altar"

Professors in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts will present an analysis of African and African diaspora art exhibitions and the transition from art in a religious setting to art in a museum.

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Duration: 1:15:52

When devotees and or/specialists build shrines and altars to their deities, they select items to stand for greater wholes, and recombine them in ways that augment and transform their meanings. By creating a microcosm of ideas and associations, an altar becomes an approachable universe, or as Yoruba of Nigeria say, a “point where the world comes together” as a “face of the gods.” How such microcosms assume new lives in museum settings will be the focus of this presentation through an analysis of particular African and African diaspora exhibitions that have featured recreations of shrines and altars, prayer rooms, and botanicas. What processes of translation are at work in such displays? Can they be considered “authentic?” What ethics are engaged in activating a shrine within a museum? What do such displays reveal about the efficacy of objects and, more broadly, the “lives” of exhibitions? In short, when does representation end and devotion begin?

Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts is Professor in UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and Consulting Curator for African Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She holds a PhD in Art History from Columbia University and served as Senior Curator at the Museum for African Art and as Deputy Director and Chief Curator of UCLA’s Fowler Museum. Roberts is the author and curator of thematic books and exhibitions that explore the philosophical underpinnings of African visual arts and expressive culture, such as secrecy, memory, writing and inscription, as well as topics of the body and female representation, arts of divination and healing, and theories of exhibiting. Allen F. Roberts is Professor in UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and is a socio-cultural anthropologist by training with his PhD from the University of Chicago. Roberts is a visual culture scholar, with interests ranging from Congolese local-level politics to ritual processes; art and AIDS awareness to Islamic mysticism in Africa; and the anthropology of architecture to African vernacular photographies. Together, the Robertses conduct research, write books, and curate major thematic exhibitions, including the award-winning works Memory: Luba Art and the Making of history (1996), and A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (2003). Their current project on devotional diasporas of Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918) is leading to a major book, exhibition, and online presence.

Published: Thursday, November 13, 2014