September 25, 2010–January 9, 2011, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Portuguese sailors landed on the shores of West Africa more than 500 years ago. Strangers at first, Europeans became trading partners, settlers, and eventually colonizers. African artists recorded every stage of these changing relationships, and this fascinating history is made evident in Through African Eyes.

This exhibition, featuring 95 works of art, is the first large-scale exhibition to provide the African point of view of Europeans. The works express an incredible diversity of response to white people, spanning the gamut of emotion from admiration to resentment. In early encounters, Africans regarded the Europeans as exotic, yet over time, with increased exposure, came to understand racial and cultural differences. Through African Eyes is comprised of seven sections.

Strangers and Spirits

This section makes clear how Africans experienced various reactions to first meetings with Europeans. The arrival of the Portuguese created a sensation. In many African cultures, whiteness is traditionally associated with the supernatural, and so, Africans instantly recognize African sculptures with white pigment surfaces as representing spirits. With their pale skin, the Portuguese were at first thought to be supernatural beings. Female Figure with Child represented an African spirit figure who served as an intermediary between humans and the supernatural world.

Traders

Traders includes works demonstrating direct partnerships between Portuguese traders and African kingdoms and the ways in which trade created a long-lasting impact on African arts and cultures. Some objects in this section depicted Europeans as traders of goods and slaves as in Carved Tusk Depicting the Slave Trade.

Settlers

Although European settlers lived apart from their African neighbors, Africans observed them closely. Mask Portrait of Albert Schweitzer captures the essence of the missionary doctor through its prominent eyebrows and distinctive moustache.

Spirituality and Technology

Some Africans adopted aspects of European religion as seen through sculptures of crucifixions, images of Christ, and in Carved Door, the biblical account of the Nativity. Africans generally admired European technology, as is evident in Ben Kane Kwei’s Fantasy Coffin, a sculpture of a Mercedes Benz from 1996, in the form of a funerary object that expressed the deceased’s desire for wealth and status.

Education

The introduction of Western teachings created tensions within African societies, and many Africans saw access to Western education as a way to influence and resist European ways of understanding the world. In Willie Bester’s Bantu Education, an assemblage of a dental chair, school desk, and shotgun, the artist makes clear the destructive forms of education suffered by Africans under the repressive apartheid regime of South Africa.

Colonizers

In the late 1800s, representatives from 12 European countries divided African into colonies and established themselves as rulers. The sculpture of Queen Victoria represents the monarch wearing a crown, veil, and long gown. African artists were inspired by images of the queen seen in colonial photographs, postage stamps, medals, and coins.

Westerners

The last section of the exhibition demonstrates how African artistic interpretation of the West continues today and includes Nyau Mask of Elvis Presley and Barber’s Signboard depicting Barack Obama.

This exhibition was organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts and was curated by Nii Quarcoopome. Leesa Fanning was the venue curator at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Generous support has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. In Kansas City the exhibition is supported by The Helzberg Fund for African Art.