Please join us in the exploration of the Hood Museum's extensive collection of African Art and dedicate a moment of our time to the cultural preservation of the African aesthetic.
The Art of Weapons: Selections from the African Collection at the Hood Museum
A Tour with Curator of African Art Ugochukwu Smooth Nzewi
November 15th, 2014
3-4:30pm
Hood Museum
This exhibition explores the Hood Museum of Art's extraordinary collection of African weapons for the first time. It focuses on the aesthetic quality
of the objects, and on the ways in which they reflect notions of masculinity, warriorhood, and ideal male beauty in traditional African societies. Because the weapons are in a Western museum's collection, the exhibition also considers Western notions of masculinity,
as represented in the collecting practices of those Christian missionaries, colonial administrators, military officers, big game hunters, and explorers who acquired most of these weapons in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Although
the exhibition draws from several cultures in the five sub-regions of Africa, it is not a broad survey of African weapons. Instead, it presents exemplary highlights from the Hood's extensive collection, categorized as "offensive" and "defensive" weapons.
Please join us in the exploration of the Hood Museum's extensive collection of African Art and dedicate a moment of our time to the cultural preservation of the African aesthetic.
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