English
The Brooklyn Museum is one of the largest in the U.S. and the second largest in New York City. However, it would have been even four times larger if the planning regulations had not obliged in 1895 to make an alteration of the original plan leading to the reduction of its excessive size. The current building was opened in 1897, but until the decade of the seventies of the twentieth century, the museum did not own its independence, being a subdivision of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts, Letters and Sciences, which also included the Academy of Music, The Botanical Gardens Museum and the popular Infancy Museum of the New York district.
The size and variety of its collections is at the height of its huge number of square meters and its spectrum ranges from stunning masterpieces of ancient Egypt to the Center for Feminist Art Elizabeth A. Sackler, which displays, among other pieces, the seminal installation of Judy Chicago´s “Dinner”
Within this impressive array of exhibits, the collection of African art (in fact the Brooklyn Museum was one of the first to present an exhibition of African art in American territory, in 1923), comprised of more than 5000 pieces that run more than 2500 years of history,makes it the largest of all existing in the United States and is especially outstanding
In the last year this extraordinary collection has undergone a meticulous process of reorganization that has finally culminated in a new way of presenting the pieces based on chronological and contextual criteria which moves aside the until now eminently geographical approach
This new presentation of these parts is due to the combined efforts of Commissioner Kevin Duomochele (assistant commissioner of the Arts section of Africa and the Pacific Islands Museum) and Matthew Yokobosky the designer (whom in the course of a trip to Cameroon Last March was fascinated by the beauty of pale yellow that seemed to be everywhere and decided to use as a dominant color in the exhibition, for which he and Duomechele wanted to convey a feeling of warmth) and results in the permanent exhibition African Innovations (http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/african_innovations/) that can be seen on the first floor of the museum´s South Gallery.
Within this new conceptual approach there has been special emphasis, not without controversy, resulting in the problems of social, political, cosmological and aesthetic aspects to which the exhibits supposedly is designed to respond to when the objects were made. In this sense it would seem that African art attempts to provide a sort of intellectual content perhaps with an excessive western point of view, that some authorized art critics have come to label paternalistic.
Paul Oilzum
The main idea of the exhibition would be that African art was created to solve a series of problems that deep down we all have to face in our human condition. Get a better idea about this affirmation and be encouraged to visit the exposition when renting apartments in New york
Translated by: Marc