Balancing Aesthetic Value and Cultural Significance in the Display of African Objects

When one places an object on a pedestal or encloses it within a glass box, one physically ascribes certain significance to the object. The context in which one places this elevated object assigns further implications to it and influences the perceptions of the audience of the object. In a particular context, the object can be characterized as art; in another the same object can be transformed into an anthropological item used to explain a particular culture or the significance a group of people designates to the object. Specifically, this paper discusses the characterization of African art objects displayed before a Western audience. Are they treated as objects with aesthetic value or as supplements to explanations of culture and religion? To what extent should museums offer interpretations or otherwise shape audience understanding of the meaning and or value of the art they present? These questions on the balance of an object’s aesthetic value and cultural significance are particularly pertinent when displaying African art to a Western audience. Selecting to emphasize appearance or to favor an educational understanding of an object in a particular exhibit becomes especially blurred in an African art exhibit because the objects were not created with the intent of being placed in a museum. Because of this both geographic and cultural distance, how the audience perceives the object is heavily dependent on how the object is displayed. Should the art world transform an object created for everyday use into a valued piece of artwork or should the object be an educational visual aid, and are both options mutually exclusive? Though there is no right or wrong answer, I believe that an object can be displayed as an art piece and be simultaneously educational.

A central theme in the discourse on the display of African art is how to anticipate and address the audience for the artwork. It is not simply enough to display a particular piece, one must decide in what manner one wants to exhibit the object. In a gallery specific to African art, there are no labels on the artwork. The gallery-goers and potential art purchasers are expected to be able to recognize the artwork and know at least some of its history and value. In a public museum, curators make the assumption that the observer knows little about the African art world, and adjust their exhibits to account for this dearth of information in the public sphere (Lecture 4 February 2009).

A twentieth century Congo Puna figure is successfully displayed as art while being educational in the permanent African collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.



It is placed on a low, white pedestal with a spotlight beaming down at it from above in contrast to the dim lighting prevalent throughout the exhibit. This display invites the perception of an aura around the piece, elevating it to the status of art just as the statue is raised to eye-level. The curator showcases the object as a work of art, highlighting its aesthetic aspects and almost declaring that this piece is art. Accompanying the statue is a label that not only explains the artist, date and medium, but also its function and use within the Congo society. The label reveals that the figure is a fertility object, represented by the figure’s pronounced genitals (Observation 9 November 2009). Viewing the figure is no longer a purely aesthetic experience, but it is now an educational activity as well. I believe LACMA is effectively displaying this figure for its value as an art object while simultaneously being educational. By including this explanatory label, the museum is neither adding to the experience of the museumgoer nor detracting from the value of the object as art.

The American Museum of Natural History has a clear educational purpose, and the displays there serve as graphic tools and learning materials to further this goal.



Its exhibits focus on anthropology and attempt to help the museumgoer understand the culture of various peoples in other parts of the world. The set-up of the museum is such that the displays support the text of an exhibit and serve as visual aids helping to illustrate a particular facet of a culture. For example, the African section contains a small display towards the back of the exhibit entitled “Beauty.” A lengthy text at eye-level describes how cattle are seen as particularly beautiful in a certain African culture and how this value is translated into a children’s game. The children collect small white stones and name them, treating the stones in the same manner as their parents treat their cattle. If one looks down to waist level, there is a glass display case containing several of these white stones (Observation 10 August 2009). The set-up is such that the objects themselves are not the focal point of the display. Rather, the description provided in the text about the game, and by extension the concept of beauty in cattle, becomes the main purpose of the display, with the objects serving to give the viewer a visual contextualization of the cultural aspect. The objects are displayed as clearly functional pieces, as supports for a text, rather than for their appearance. Though the rocks are the embodiment of beauty within this particular African culture, they are not displayed as beautiful objects in the anthropology exhibit, but serve to augment the text, emphasizing the scholarly nature of the installation. The perception of the stones changes because of the display; the Western audience does not view them the same way that one might view a diamond or precious stone because of the way in which the stones are displayed, though the culture where they originated did hold the stones in the same regard as valuable jewels. I believe that the Natural History Museum could have easily displayed the stones as art reminiscent of valuable jewels and still have included an explanatory label if the stones were in a glass case with a spotlight.

The Louvre in Paris is a museum that consistently includes only the artist and the date on the labels next to each work (Lecture 25 March 2009).




Figure 1 below depicts an African object from Guinea displayed in the Louvre without any labels that would help to illuminate or elucidate the meaning or function of the artwork.

Figure 1



Instead, the text (not depicted in Figure 1) nominally supports the object. The relationship between the text and the artwork is minimal, constructing the central role of appearance that an art museum display traditionally stresses. But would a label explaining the functionality of the piece on the right wall detract from the piece as art? I think it would simply provide more background to the piece.

Thought the act of displaying an object carries much significance with it and assigns the object different meanings and interpretations, art can be displayed both for appreciation of form and visual aesthetics and displayed in a scholarly manner to evoke understanding and meaning. Because most African art pieces were originally household objects, the art world is free to assign new meaning to an object; it can be transformed from an object created for everyday use into a valued piece of artwork or into an educational visual aid, or both. As Susan Vogel states, African art does not have the legacy of being displayed in art museums and there is not a general public consciousness of African objects belonging in an art museum, resulting in an open discourse on the appropriate, rapidly changing ideas for design of these exhibits. Though there is no right or wrong answer on how African objects should be displayed in museums, I would hope that museums serve as a place where anthropology and art combine so that museumgoers can both appreciate and understand art.

Artist's Statement-- Creating happiness through film

I have found that my personal happiness depends on the happiness of Those around me. If my friends and family are happy, I am generally happy. And when things are not going well for the people around me, I take on their stress and foul mood. Luckily, I seem to have the fortunate ability to make the people around me smile. I somehow manage to put a smile on most people’s face when recounting an awkward story or sharing a funny moment. I found at nine years old that the easiest and most effective way of sharing my sense of humor is through making films.

Movies and television shows are the ultimate escape for the viewer; they can make the audience laugh and cry, and movies can even provoke change on a mass scale. Because my goal throughout my life has been to make others happy, I am attracted to film since there is no better medium to communicate an emotion to a mass audience countless times. Through film I have the potential to make millions of people laugh and smile. I can change the mood of someone in New York in the year 2009 and in Tokyo, Japan in 2050.

I make situational comedies, that is, comedies that are character driven and are humorous because of an awkward moment, not from a physical action. For example, a physical comedy would be a man falling on the ground because he slipped on a banana peel. To make this scene a situational comedy, the man falls to the ground after slipping on a banana peel, all in front of his ex-girlfriend. Awkward.

I like developing characters that are easily relatable. This means featuring characters in my films that have universal problems and who are sympathetic in understandable ways. We all know what it feels like to have feelings for someone that are not reciprocated. We have all had a zit on our face at an inopportune time. Humans learn social norms by watching film and television shows so having easily relatable characters in my films allows the audience to leave the theater with a feeling of acceptance and happiness.

I have always been interested in film editing. I believe that I have good comedic timing and I also have great rhythmic timing so I love editing music videos. I believe that editors are the true storytellers since the film is sculpted and molded in the editing room. As an editor I have the control to turn a bad acting performance into a compelling performance and I can create stories that did not previously exist. A film is truly made in the editing room.

I also enjoy directing. This semester I was one of four students chosen to direct an undergraduate thesis, the most advanced and prestigious film funded by USC. I believe that coming from an editing background makes me a stronger director because I have a good idea of how the material will cut together so I really know my story and characters.

I love all aspects of the filmmaking process. Really every role on a film crew is important and I have been fortunate enough to attend the USC School of Cinematic Arts where I have had the opportunity to try my hand at every position. I have already made nine films and a music video within school and am looking forward to creating more films that generate happiness in the future.

LARC- Reversing the creative process

I worked with Renata Popenhagen, a Fine Arts major, Christopher Goodpasture, a Piano major and Alex Wright, a theater major. The obvious project that the four of us could have done together with me being a Film Production major would have been to make a film where Renata did production design, Alex acted, I edited and Chris composed and performed a score. We all realized, however, that we wanted to chose a project where none of us would have to compromise our true preferred art form so we could each retain our roles. Therefore we decided to do a project that reversed the creative process by focusing on the actual process, rather then on the end result. Our project was an experiment of sorts where we were not concerned with making a singular unified piece, but separate pieces of the same theme.

I retained my role as an editor/ director, acting as the facilitator of the project. First, I looked through Renata's portfolio and found a piece that she had done in acrylic on canvas that I felt had many universal themes, but was still opened to interpretation. Here is he painting below:


To me this painting looked like rays of light stabbing a black blob. Without having Renata tell me any background on the piece, I created my own meaning and came up with the words "tragedy," "orange," "dark," "betrayal," and "hope" to describe the painting.

I then met with Alex and only told her the words I came up with to describe the piece. She brought to the table different monologues from plays that she thought fit with the emotions I conveyed through these words. After looking through Hamlet, Macbeth and Cesar, I felt that Portia's scene in Caesar most represented the painting. I then directed Alex to perform the piece in a more dramatic way than she had previously performed the piece. The character of Portia has this singular monologue in the entire play before she commits suicide so Alex and I discussed that performing the monologue in a more angry and intense manner still made sense in the context of the play.

After meeting with Alex I met with Chris to help him chose a piece that went along with the words I used to describe Renata's painting. Chris immediately knew the piece he wanted to use; a Czech piece that was written at the turn of the century that sounded to Chris like tragedy and death. The piece has lots of long pauses and Chris emphasized those moments of silence to represent tragedy, betrayal and hope while he performed the piece.

Being the sort of middle man in my group was a really cool experience for me. Previously I have been told exactly what to do as an editor and I always resented the director for giving me such strict orders as I felt like I was merely a button pusher and could not put in any of my own personal creative input. I have also been a director and I always felt like a tyrant when I am the one to take away that creative control from my crew. Directing/ editing this project was a lot of fun for me because I was able to give the three artists in my group some guidance and rules in their picking of pieces and choosing how to perform their pieces, however, each artist was still able to maintain their own creative control and make decisions for themselves.

The presentation, or the grand reveal of our experiment, was a lot of fun for me because I got to see the reactions of Chris and Alex to seeing the original piece of artwork that had inspired my words that in turn inspired their projects. It was also interesting to see Renata's reaction on how I had interpreted her painting and how she felt towards the monologue performed and the piano piece performed.

Though the painting, the piano piece and the monologue are separate pieces, it was great to see the the three art forms come together to express the same theme in different ways. There was no success or failure to our project and I believe that is what made it really fun and collaborative. I really enjoyed the whole process and seeing all three aspects to our presentation in class together was a great conclusion to our efforts!

Burn After Reading

I am finally getting around to seeing all of the movies that I wanted to see last winter but did not have the time too. Burn After Reading is a Coen Brother film (written by Joel Coen and directed by Ethan Coen)
that got very mixed reviews. I have talked to people who both hated it and loved it so I figured I would see it for myself since everyone seems to have something to say about it.

The film is very well done and includes such high profile actors as George Clooney, John Malcovich and Brad Pitt, and though the acting in the film is very strong, I did not enjoy the film's plot for the most part. I went into the film thinking that it is a comedy and I think that is why I found the film to be disappointing. I did, however, LOVE the ending. The pay off of the entire film comes in the last minutes of the movie. Though the payoff is fabulous and hilarious, I am not sure if it justifies the rest of the movie which I did not enjoy much. It is frustrating to sit through an entire movie not enjoying yourself only to enjoy the last few minutes. I don't want to give too much away to readers who have not seen the film, but the pay off basically makes fun of the entire film and it made me feel almost silly for sitting through the entire hour and a half.

The quality of the picture was great; I enjoyed all of the dolly shots, handheld shots and the color palette, but I most enjoyed the characters in Burn After Reading. Every character is quirky and put into weird and awkward situations. No character is very relatable except for the gym owner who *spoiler alert* gets shot in the end. The Coen Brothers are known for their strong character portrayals and in this film they nailed their characters.







Brad Pitt plays a gym trainer who is one of those guys obsessed with exercising and nothing else.











John Malcovich is quite a character, playing an angry man who is fired from his low job at the CIA.









George Clooney plays a ridiculous guy who thinks that he is very clever, but in reality, he is a man who gets caught sleeping around and does everything but outsmart the women who he is with.









Tilda Swinton plays John Malcovich's cheating wife who is out to get his money in a divorce settlement.

All in all, if you are looking for a movie that is pointless until the end (and even then the film is pointless- you will know what I mean if you watch the film), Burn After Reading is a film you will enjoy.

Here is the link to the Rotten Tomatoes review of Burn After Reading
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/burn_after_reading/