Exhibitions

This section considers these ideas in relation to the objects and their makers. It celebrates the artists of these works as important cultural actors and demonstrates how artists from the societies represented were pioneers and explorers. Pushing the boundaries of the knowable world through their creations, they produced channels through which humans could mediate myriad relationships, both earthly and divine.

The Work of Art

The works in this exhibition are the products of artistic virtuosity and consummate skill. At the same time, they were created to fulfill specific purposes and roles in people’s lives. Their artistry and aesthetic presence were critical to their effectiveness. The outward appearance of an object—including its form and iconography—contributes to its ability to work, that is, its capacity to act. The beliefs and concepts that give objects power and meaning in turn dictate their aesthetic appearance. In other words, how art looks has much to do with how it works: form and function are closely intertwined.

Resting the Head

Because the head is frequently associated with spiritual power and the concentrated essence of a human being, the object on which it rests is often a revered art form.   In East and Central Africa wooden supports are constructed to cradle the neck during sleep and to protect an elaborate coiffure, a key aspect of individual identity and status. Such supports can also serve as vehicles for bridging human and ancestral realms. From ancient to modern times East Asian peoples have made pillows from a wide variety of materials, including stone, clay, wood, grass, bamboo, rattan, and cloth. Through their form and decorative motifs, many of these provide clues to a group’s social and spiritual life. Among Pacific peoples elaborate headrests serve as prestige items elevating one’s position in society.

 Sealed With a “Quid”

A slice of areca nut and a dab of slaked lime, rolled inside a betel leaf—these are the basic ingredients of the betel quid chewed by millions of people in Asia and the Pacific. Betel is a mild stimulant, activated by chewing these ingredients together. Its social meanings are myriad. It may be prepared by a lover, exchanged with in-laws to propose a marriage, extended in welcome to friends or enemies, or accepted as a sign of deference to authority. The care and the precious materials invested in making the beautiful implements used to prepare betel—including areca nut cutters, mortars, and lime spatulas—are testimony to the importance of all things sealed with a quid.

Capturing Beauty

Japanese basket makers capture the beauty of carefully selected natural materials in their constructions. These materials are intended to harmonize with the meticulously arranged formal floral compositions (ikebana) that will be placed within the finished basket. In traditional-style Japanese houses, flower arrangements in baskets may be placed in a recessed alcove, called the tokonoma. This is a space that evolved from what was originally an altar, the sacred center of the home. The basket and floral arrangement are used as key elements in setting the emotional tone of the household.

For Home and Hearth

Fowler collections are rich in domestic implements and household furnishings from around the world that reflect imaginative formal solutions to the design of otherwise functional objects. The various objects shown here from East and Central Africa, Borneo, and New Guinea reveal the love for beauty in daily routines. From kitchen hooks to trinket boxes, from baby carriers to chairs, these objects enhanced daily life and household chores through their elegance and meaning.

Artistry in Clay

The potters of ancient Peru created works of extraordinary beauty and technical virtuosity. Little is known about how such elaborately formed ceramics functioned in ancient Peruvian life. Some may have been reserved for religious and ceremonial use associated with burials. In most instances, however, they probably served a variety of household functions. Their rich and varied iconography helps us understand something of their world and suggests the importance of the surrounding flora and fauna, as well as the secular and supernatural realms in which the vessels may have functioned.

North and south coast styles differ in form and surface qualities. In southern Peru the emphasis was on polychrome surface decoration, vessels with round bottoms, and the double spout and bridge shape. Mixtures of clay, mineral pigments, and water were used to produce the various slips that so masterfully colored the surfaces of south coast vessels. In northern Peru, the emphasis was on three-dimensional sculpture, ceramic vessels with flat bottoms, and the stirrup spout bottle form. Certain features typical of north coast ceramic traditions emerged as early as 1800 b.c.e. and continued for millennia.

The compelling visual art forms presented in this section of the exhibition are bearers of knowledge, intended to encode, protect, or communicate particular types of information. Such objects have long been used to evoke proverbial wisdom, impart esoteric teachings, celebrate family genealogies, or express moral values. In contexts such as these, art functions like language, sending messages and safeguarding intellectual heritage.

The motifs found on archaeological objects, for example, can teach us about the practices and lives of peoples who left no written records. Memory devices are designed to assist their owners with the recollection of people, events, and sacred places. Styles of dress and adornment convey aspects of personal and cultural identity. Whether worn, carried, displayed, buried, or performed, these works of art play critical roles in the perpetuation of traditions and teachings from generation to generation, teacher to student, performer to audience.

The Moche: Painting History

The Moche peoples of ancient Peru (100–800 c.e.) portrayed complex scenes on fineline painted vessels, depicting everything from hunting and fishing to the ritual battles of supernaturals. These were rendered with such a high degree of realism that researchers have been able to establish correlations between the painted scenes and the actual environment in which Moche artists lived. Even when stylized, clothing, ornaments, and implements represented in the paintings are remarkably accurate depictions of equivalent objects that have been recovered from archaeological excavations. Since the Moche did not leave a writing system, these ceramic works are critical to reconstructing Moche civilization.

Memory and Cosmology

Peoples throughout the world have devised complex and useful visual systems for recording and transmitting their traditions and beliefs. Each of the objects in this group played a part in activating memory or cosmology for critically important social situations and for ensuring cultural continuity. Among the Maya, for example, hieroglyphic writing was merged with visual imagery to communicate important dynastic information. In other cultures, systems of graphic inscription were developed for many purposes, including the transmission of calendrical and cosmological knowledge for divination or forecasting events. Additionally, motifs on many works of art serve to recall stories for retelling in the present through oral narratives and performances that keep traditions alive.

Dress and Identity

Dress and adornment are social documents of time and place and at the same time convey aspects of individual and community identities. Details of dress—patterning, style, and color—may indicate age, marital status, geographic region, and social position. Dress can have a performative quality as well, echoing and amplifying the movements of the wearer.

The Fowler Museum maintains one of the world’s most encyclopedic collections of textiles and other items of dress. This section of Art and Knowledge features frequently changing displays of items selected from those collections, which reveal how people from various cultures around the globe communicate their identity and preserve and transmit cultural wisdom through textiles and related accoutrements.

Performing Knowledge

Certain works of art are central to the education of children and adults. These objects communicate the values and beliefs of past generations through their forms and associated performances. Works in this section explore teaching through the arts in contexts of initiation, storytelling, and theater. Among the peoples of West and Central Africa, certain masks—when danced during periods of initiation—encode spiritual, moral, and practical knowledge. Dolls in many cultures are the playthings of young children, but among the Hopi of southwestern North America, they also represent supernatural intermediaries that can effect change in one’s life. And in theater contexts in Southeast Asia, puppets perform sacred stories, educating and entertaining youth and adults in the great epics of Asia.

Proclaiming Heritage

Among the most important arts of the Austronesian peoples (who include today’s Indonesians, Filipinos, Polynesians, and others) are the carving of ancestor figures and the recitation of oral histories. The intersection of these arts preserves knowledge of the community’s heritage. The carved figures, often mounted in prominent locations in villages, serve as ever-present reminders of those who came before. By reciting genealogies and lists of place names, orators evoke the movements of ancestors and support the current leaders’ claims to authority. The ways of the ancestors are honored to secure their blessing, which promotes health, prosperity, and fertility in the community, fields, and fishing grounds.   Although the works displayed here were mostly made in the nineteenth or early twentieth century, this outlook remains influential to varying degrees today in communities ranging from remote atolls to great urban centers.

In many world cultures, the arts play an integral role in defining and activating power. Although commonly associated with domination and military might, power and the concepts surrounding it are far more nuanced when explored in cross-cultural perspective. The works presented in this section, for example, have been used not only to augment political authority but also to ensure control over the environment, negotiate gender relationships, or express status and prestige.

Intended to balance power relationships or to harness spiritual forces, such objects visibly convey their authority and significance. Some are characterized by the use of precious materials, signaling rarity and wealth. Others incorporate symbolic motifs with meanings known only to particular individuals or groups. Still others represent animals possessing characteristics that are actually or metaphorically associated with power and leadership. The works featured here facilitate and represent hierarchical relationships through form, aesthetic conception, and attendant uses and meanings.

Empowering Leaders

Africa has been rich in arts supporting leadership and governance from precolonial times to the present. Whether in the context of military states, royal confederacies, sacred chieftaincies, or councils of elders, the arts have served to uphold and strengthen those in power and their domains. In turn, rulers have often been patrons of the arts with the volume of artistic production dependent on their ability to marshal ample resources.

This section explores particular examples of African leadership to demonstrate that political power can be defined only in specific cultural contexts. It may, for example, reside in a king’s quick wit and oratorical wisdom, or it may arise from a ruler’s link to the spirit world. Sometimes power results from a delicate balance between a ruler and other branches of government. In such a case the arts can serve to ensure social control and justice.

Negotiating Gender

Innumerable objects across time and space articulate concepts of gender and assist men and women to negotiate their differences and their areas of interdependence. Certain works reinforce the power of one gender over the other, while others express the complementarity of female and male attributes. Works of art may also reflect gender roles as they are perceived in the spirit world. The objects shown here demonstrate how cultures devise their own ways of conceiving female and male categories and of translating those concepts into art forms that work to bridge and reconcile differences.