Burkina Faso: the Thomas G.B. Wheelock Gift

Please join us at the opening reception for the exhibition “Burkina Faso: the Thomas G.B. Wheelock Gift”, On Sunday, April 29^th, 2012.

Refreshments will be served from 3 to 5 p.m. in the museum and the adjacent cloister garden. Opening remarks will be at 3:45.

The exhibition celebrates the gift of one hundred and forty four works of art to the SMA African Art Museum from Mr. Wheelocks private collection.

On display are plank masks, face masks and head crests, figure sculptures, men’s and women’s chairs and stools, jewelry and other items of personal adornment, musical instruments, and metalwork.

Mr. Wheelock will be there, as will Bill Wright, a great friend and supporter of the SMA museum. Bill and Tom worked together in Burkina Faso in the early nineteen seventies, and were the first students of African art to deal in the arts of Burkina Faso, and to bring it to the attention of scholars, collectors, museums, and the general public.

The exhibition will be presented online as well as on the walls of the gallery. If you seek more information than we can present in the display cases, go to the display station on the table in the museum rotunda and click on Burkina Faso. Clicking on an icon will give you in-depth information about various aspects of an object – its religious, philosophical, historical, functional, decorative, aesthetic, and recreational functions, for instance. Books and periodicals dealing with the art of Burkina Faso are also available on this table.

Additionally, all of this information is available at home. Just go to www.smafathers.org, and click on MUSEUM

FR. MICHAEL MORAN, PRESIDENT
ROBERT J. KOENIG, DIRECTOR
THE AFRICAN ART MUSEUM OF THE SMA FATHERS MARCH 15, 2012

Browse the exhibition case by case:

The Inland Niger Delta (I) – Jewelry (II) – Chairs and Stools (III) – Color and Pattern (IV), Plank Masks (V) – The Lobi (VI) – Bateba Morphology (VII) – Animal Spirits (VIII) – Chairs and Stools (IX) – Mossi Figure Sculpture (X) – Nakomse and Nyonyose (XI) – Nyonyosi Stone Sculpture (XII) – Bura, Sudan and Niger (XIII) – The Dama and the Kanaga Mask (XIV) – Walu and Komo Masks (XV) – Bushcow Masks (XVI) – Shared Iconography and the Ground Hornbill (XVII) – Realism and Abstraction (XVIII) – The Gurunsi and the Antelope Masks (XIX) – Masks With Crests (XX) – Carving and Wearing a Mask (XXI) – Form and Function (XXII-XXIII) – Decoration (XXIV)