The Museum fur Voelkerkunde in Berlin is one of the world's foremost museums of anthropology, and the art of Central Africa is only one of the many strengths of its extensive African holdings. Although these important works have long been known and admired by scholars and collectors of African art through the museum's comprehensive program of publications, they have only occasionally been on public display in its galleries since 1945. The exhibition highlights the Museum fur Voelkerkunde's collection of Central African sculpture.
The Museum fur Voelkerkunde is now part of the comprehensive seven-museum complex of the Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Dahlem, West Berlin, and was formed in the 1870s and 1880s, decades that saw the creation of many of the world's premier museums of art, natural history, and anthropology. In contrast, The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired its first African sculpture in 1950, and the Museum of Primitive Art, whose collection merged with ours in 1978 and 1979, was founded in 1954. Thus, the African collection at the Metropolitan Museum was not begun until more than seventy years after the creation of the Museum fur Voelkerkunde in Berlin, and consequently it is vastly different in size and scope. Central Africa in particular is one of the areas in which our own collection is not as rich. This show presented a more complete view of Central Africa's major sculptural traditions to our visitors. [This book was originally published in 1990 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]
- ISBN10 0300201427
- ISBN13 9780300201420
- Publish Date 10 September 2013 (first published 1 September 1990)
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 87
- Language English