Archive for May, 2012



Friday Photos: Creative Children

The world needs a little bit more creativity, joy, and delight.  Recently, I learned of a grant opportunity for elementary schools sponsored by Crayola and the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP).   Champion Creatively Alive Children is a grant opportunity that supports innovation and the integration of arts across the curriculum to build 21st century skills.  Awards to each school total $3,000 and include Crayola products. Proposals will be accepted through June 15, 2012.  Take action and champion creativity in your school!

Nicole Stutzman
Director of Teaching Programs and Partnerships

Artworks shown in images:

  • Mark Rothko, Orange, Red and Red, 1962, Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows
  • Jean Dubuffet, The Reveler (Le Festoyeur), 1964, Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James H. Clark

Ivory Tusks and Cultural Hybridity

During the 19th century, carved ivory tusks were commissioned for export to countries such as Portugal, Britain, France, Spain, Holland, India, and America. These “souvenirs,” often mementos of an African adventure, exhibited a combination of indigenous and foreign subjects and styles.

This Saturday, an interesting exhibit opens in the Museum concourse, Souvenir: A 19th Century Carved Tusk from the Loango Coast of Africa.  While the exhibition explores African souvenir art in the 19th and 20th centuries, the highlighted work is a carved ivory tusk the Museum acquired in 1969. This is the first time the tusk has been on view since its acquisition.

Tusk with multiple scenes in relief, 19th-20th century, Dallas Museum of Art, The Clark and Frances Stillman Collection of Congo Sculpture, gift of Eugene and Margaret McDermott

Six hundred to one thousand of these tusks are estimated to exist in private collections and museums. An article in Smithsonian magazine refers to these tusks as “spirals of history,” as the images carved in relief often tell stories of transatlantic  trade, manual laborers, rituals, and interactions with foreigners.

The spiral motif as well as the concept of conveying narrative through a spiral recall indigenous artistic traditions, while the subject matter of these tusks often incorporate foreign objects, subjects, or figures. Ultimately, these carved tusks are cultural hybrids.

I’m thinking of all the teaching possibilities related to cultural hybridity. In a recent discussion with colleagues about the very personal and complex implications of defining one’s own “culture,” I am confident that many students could relate to this notion of cultural hybridity. It would be interesting to ask your students to consider their “culture.” Often we associate culture with ethnicity, but culture could also include age, gender, geographic location, religion, or political status.  What could an exercise about exploring and defining the various elements of one’s culture look like? For example, you might ask students to design a souvenir about the various cultures that affect their day to day actions and decision-making. What would their souvenir look like? How would they represent various cultures?

For teaching ideas and information about other works in our African collection, visit our our new online teaching materials related to our standing power figure (nkisi nkondi), helmet mask (mukenga), or rhythm pounder. Please comment and share with us the ways that you and your colleagues are incorporating ideas about cultural hybridity (and the fluid nature of culture) in your classrooms, and come check out Souvenir, on view until September.

Andrea V. Severin
Coordinator of Teaching Programs

References:

The Quality Instinct

Join us Wednesday, May 2 at 7:30pm for an Arts & Letters Live Special Event, Seeing Art Through a Museum Director’s Eye: Dr. Maxwell Anderson in Conversation with Krys Boyd.

The Quality Instinct: Seeing Art Through a Museum Director's Eye by Maxwell L. Anderson

The Quality Instinct: Seeing Art Through a Museum Director’s Eye was published less than a month after Maxwell L. Anderson began as The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art.  In an interview, he said “The book is really an introduction to a ground floor of understanding about artistic intention and artistic result, and I hope people will take something away from it in feeling more comfortable with objects that, even today, great professors of artistic and art historical theory may be a little out of touch with.”

Maxwell describes his family’s travels when he was a child as “great exposure to new ways of seeing the world”.  These experiences clearly made an indelible impression on him, as he states “I used, in the course of a career as an art historian, and a museum curator and director, to go back and refresh my eye about what I learned as a child and how it would influence the way I see today as an adult.”

Rather than our standard interview format, I decided instead to ask our new Director five quick questions:

  • Are there any books you’ve read multiple times?  Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger.  The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope.
  • Do you have a “can’t miss” TV show?  The Big C is one Jacqueline and I don’t miss.  That, and Shark Tank.
  • What is your favorite quote? “I’d rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.” – Albert Einstein
  • If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be? Montesquieu – he was so funny and casual and arch.
  • Coming from Indianapolis, how are you preparing for the Dallas summer?  I’m looking forward to it.  It will be cooler than growing up in New York in the summer; there, I would walk out on the hot street, get in a cab and stick to the vinyl seat, and go to a walk-up apartment without air conditioning.

Don’t miss what will surely be an interesting conversation between Maxwell Anderson and Krys Boyd.

Melissa Nelson
Manager of Teaching in the Community


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