AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
SACRED ARTS OF HAITIAN VODOU
October 10, 1998-January 3, 1999
Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, the first comprehensive exhibition ever to explore the arts produced within that vibrant Afro-Caribbean religion, opens at the American Museum of Natural History on October 10, 1998. This major presentation, which remains on view through January 3, 1999, displays Vodou ritual art in the framework of its rich historical and cultural context, illuminating a continuing legacy of consummate imagination and creativity.
The exhibition features a wide spectrum of objects - more than 500 - including paintings, sequined flags, sacred bottles, pots, painted calabashes, beaded rattles, bound medicine packets, dolls, musical instruments, and multimedia assemblages. These extraordinary materials are complemented by music, slides, video, and large-format photographs. The objects in the exhibition, which was organized by the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, are drawn from the Fowler Museum's large collection,
as well as from Haitian, American, and European museums, and distinguished
private collections.
Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou opens with a portrayal of Haiti's dramatic history as depicted through paintings. The main deities of Vodou are then introduced through the objects that are used to invoke and attract them. These are first presented thematically, and are then dramatically re-assembled in the context of a recreated Vodou temple, or ounfò, and three altars expressing the major rites of the religion. The altars themselves were carefully recreated by Haitian ritual experts, based on working altars in Port-au-Prince.
Origins of Vodou
Vodou, the predominant religion of the Haitian people, was born of the encounter between African and Western religious traditions and practices, beginning in the sixteenth century, when enslaved Africans brought to the Americas several closely related religious traditions from West and Central Africa. (The Haitian Creole word "vodou," which means "sacred," was borrowed from the Fon language of West Africa.) In the Americas, the Africans came into contact with a variety of European traditions, including the art and ritual practices of Roman Catholicism and assorted hermetic and spiritist traditions, such as Freemasonry. Vodou thus represents the fusion of several different belief systems into an original religion. Vodou is still evolving and changing as it is practiced in Haiti and North America, and parallel, African-derived religions now flourish in the Caribbean, South America, and major cities of the United States and Canada.
The Exhibition
Divided into eight sections, Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou presents historically, culturally, and aesthetically significant examples of Vodou ritual art. The introductory section presents Haitian cultural and political history as passionately interpreted by some of Haiti's most brilliant painters, and introduces Haiti's physical environment through videos and photo murals. The following section, Vodou Divinities, presents an overview of the eleven principal divinities, or lwa, from two major groups of deities: the Rada (benign spirits from ancestral West Africa) and the Petwo/Kongo (aggressive, fiery spirits who represent fused Central African and Creole traditions from Haiti). The lwa are portrayed through individual assemblages of their votive objects.
The third section of the exhibition, Tools for Healing, Devotion, and Power,
explores the various genres of altar art, focusing on objects used to approach the lwa. There are summoning objects, such as drums and rattles; medicinal objects, such as Kongo packets, which are wrapped containers filled with leaves, herbs, earth, and other ingredients; spirit repositories or containers, such as bottles, calabash bowls, and ceramic pots that both attract and contain spiritual forces; and signifiers, such as crosses, mirrors, and chromolithographs
of saints.
The fourth section of the exhibition is devoted to a spectacular collection of some forty sequined Flags (drapo), out of a total of seventy in the exhibition. These flags, which are used to salute the divinities in ceremonies, represent the most celebrated form of Vodou art. The Roots section then explores the major cultural influences on the sacred arts of Vodou, and includes ritual paraphernalia from Africa (Fon/Yoruba and Kongo), sacramental and liturgical objects of Roman Catholicism, and costumes and cult objects from Freemansonry and related European spiritist traditions.
The sixth section, Vodou as Inspiration, presents the work of five contemporary artists who have drawn inspiration from their religion - painter Hector Hyppolite (1894 - 1948), considered to be perhaps the greatest artist in the Haitian tradition; sculptor Georges Liautaud (1899 - 1991); sequined-flag maker Antoine Oleyant (1955 - 1992); painter Edouard Duval-Carrié (b. 1954); and Pierrot Barra (b. 1942), who makes fantastical representations of Vodou spirits out of recycled open-market materials.
The seventh section - a full replica of a Vodou temple - is the focal point of
the exhibition. Specially created for Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, the temple consists of
a dancing area (peristil) and adjoining altar rooms (djevo). Videos of Vodou ceremonies, recorded in Haiti and projected onto parts of the temple, are shown simultaneously and continuously. Mannequin figures in ceremonial dress show how worshippers perform
Vodou rituals around the poto mitan, a pole extending from floor to ceiling in the center
of the temple.
Adjacent to the re-created temple are three altars developed in collaboration with several Vodou priests and priestesses. Each altar, containing scores of sacred objects intended to summon the lwa, is based on a Haitian prototype and honors one of the three basic forms
of Vodou: the Rada, the Petwo/Kongo, and the Bizango (a secret society, whose imagery intimidates in order to impart respect for the entwined mysteries of life, death, and sexual regeneration).
The presentation of Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou at the American Museum of Natural History features three original paintings by Fritz St. Jean, a Haitian artist who works in Queens, NY. These works, which were commissioned by the Museum especially
for the New York showing, depict three lwa: Legba, the deity of the crossroads, who is also the chief lwa of all rituals; Ezili Danto, the female deity of mothers and protector of women; and Ogou, the male deity of war, depicted by St. Jean as Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the "Liberator of Haiti."
Background
The exhibition - five years in the making - originated at the Fowler Museum
of Cultural History and was co-curated by Donald J. Cosentino, professor of African and Caribbean folklore, and chair of the folklore and mythology program at UCLA; and Marilyn Houlberg, professor of art and anthropology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The project was undertaken in collaboration with the national museums and the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and UCLA's African Studies Center and Center for African-American Studies.
The wide, interdisciplinary scope of the project required contributions from specialists in art history, folklore, history, anthropology, and sociology, as well as
from priests and priestesses, who offered their personal, intimate views of Vodou.
The presentation of Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou at the American Museum of Natural History, which is the final venue for the exhibition, has been organized by Enid Schildkrout, chair and curator in the Museum's Department of Anthropology. It was installed by the Museum's Department of Exhibition.
Publication and Educational Programming
The exhibition is accompanied by Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, a richly illustrated, authoritative book - 450 pages, with 500 color and black-and-white photographs - published by the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. The publication, which includes sixteen essays by Haitian and American scholars, was edited by Dr. Cosentino,
and is available in the Museum Shop for $99 clothbound, $59 softcover.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum's Department of Education is planning a wide array of special programs for families, school groups, teachers, and
adults, including a lecture series, dance and music performances, panels, workshops,
and gallery talks.
Sponsorship
Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou was organized by the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Rockefeller Foundation. The presentation of this exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History is made possible through the support of the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Endowment Fund.
* * *
For more information, contact the Museum's Department
of Communications, 212-769-5800
or visit the exhibition
on-line at:www.amnh.org/exhibitions/vodou
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