Ife art on tour of Europe, America from today
From Abosede Musari, Abuja

THE National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), in collaboration with a Spanish Foundation, Fundacion Marcelino Botin and the New York’s Museum for African Art have planned to exhibit over one hundred choice and ancient art works of Ife in some cities in Europe and America.

The exhibition, which opens today, June 16, 2009 at the Fundacion Marcelino Botin in Santander, Spain, is billed to be on a tour to Madrid in September, courtesy of the Spanish Ministry of Culture. It will thereafter, in early 2010, move to London where it can be seen at the British Museum.

Spanish Ambassador to Nigeria, Angel Losada, who announced the exhibition tour, said that the Museum of African Art of New York would be responsible for the tour to several major cities in the United States from the summer of 2010.

Tagged, Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria, the show is expected to feature about 109 extraordinary bronze, terra-cotta and stone sculptures that date back to between 12th and 15th century from Ife, the ancient Yoruba town of South-western part of Nigeria.

Speaking on the reason for the special interest in the Ife Art despite the diverse and rich works of ancient arts across Nigeria, Losada said that Ife civilization had produced some of the most extraordinary works of art anywhere, being distinguished by their striking beauty and unparallel technical accomplishment even though most of them were being exhibited outside of Nigeria for the first time.

The ambassador who said he had already got the blessing of the Ife monarch, Ooni of Ife, to stage the exhibitions, stated that “technically and visually, the artworks of ancient Ife are among the most remarkable in the world, including the near life-size heads and figures of humans in terra-cotta and bronze, some cast in nearly pure copper, a feat which the early Greeks, Italians and Chinese never achieved”.

He praised the artists at Ife, the ancient Yoruba town, for being able to create unique sculptural corpus which rank among Africa’s and the world’s most aesthetically striking and technically sophisticated. He added that the exhibitions would feature the accomplishments of the unique Ife civilization and examine how factors of dynastic power and divine authority shaped the exceptional arts.

The exhibition will include portrait heads, exquisite miniatures, expressive caricature of old age, portrayals of horrifying diseases, monstrous figurations and lively animals. The ambassador said that a group of awe-inspiring copper life-size portrait heads would form the visual high point of the exhibition.

“Until now, there has been no broad-based museum exhibition outside of Ife itself focused exclusively on these works. Dynasty and Divinity will address critical issues of cultural identity, political conflict, diplomacy and healing through the art of this early African polity”,

“The Nigerian government’s exceptional commitment to this project, with all loans coming exclusively from Nigerian museums, assures the inclusion of 109 of the most famous and beautiful Ife objects in bronze, terra-cotta, stone and glass”, he said.

The exhibition in Spain will feature a lot of activities such as African film and tradition, exhibition at Villa Iris, a building in Santander used by the foundation for educational purposes and to exhibit works of young talents, a musical concert by Seun Kuti and the Egypt 80 band, and lectures that will deal with subjects related to ancient Ife art. The Villa Iris exhibition will include works by artists Nabil Boutros, Viye Diba and Samuel Fosso. It will serve as an aesthetic contrast to the view of ancient African art that will be on display.

Director-General of NCMM, Joseph Eborieme, is expected to be one of the resource persons at the lectures along with Dr. Enid Schildkrout, Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Publications at the Museum for African Art and Professor Henry John Drewal of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Eborieme, a Cambridge trained anthropologist, with particular reference to material culture, is billed to speak on Ife-Benin Relationship Through the Spectacle of the Art Historian and Anthropologist.