FACT SHEET

EXHIBITION	The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou
DATES	October 10, 1998-January 3, 1999
CONTENT	This is the first comprehensive exhibition ever to explore the arts of the Afro-Caribbean religion of Vodou. The exhibition features more than 500 objects - including paintings, sequined flags, sacred bottles, pots, painted calabashes, beaded rattles, bound medicine packets, dolls, musical instruments, and multimedia assemblages - on loan from public and private collections in the United States, Haiti, and Europe. These materials, as well as music, slides, video, and large-format photographs, are used to trace the complex and dramatic history and cultural context of Vodou.
HIGHLIGHTS	A full replica of a Vodou temple, specially created for The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, is the focal point of the exhibition. Videos of actual Vodou ceremonies recorded in Haiti are projected onto parts of the temple. Inside, mannequin figures in ceremonial dress show how worshippers perform Vodou rituals around the poto mitan, or center pole. Also inside the temple is a selection of Vodou artifacts, including ceremonial drums. Several murals will be painted on the temple walls by a local Haitian artist, similar to the artwork found on the walls of existing temples in Haiti. Adjacent to the re-created temple are three altars set up by a Haitian priest; each altar is based on a Haitian prototype and honors one of the three major sets of Vodou deities, or lwa. Other exhibition highlights include a spectacular collection of some 70 sequined flags, used in ceremonies honoring the lwa, and a selection of works by several important Haitian 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); and Pierrot Barra (b. 1942), who makes fantastical representations of Vodou spirits out of recycled open-market materials.
BACKGROUND	Haitian Vodou was born of the encounter between African and Western religious traditions and practices, beginning in the seventeenth century, when enslaved Africans brought to the Americas several closely related religious traditions from West and Central 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, still evolving and changing as it is practiced in Haiti and North America, thus represents the fusion of several different belief systems into an original religion.
ORGANIZATION	Organized at the American Museum of Natural History by Enid Schildkrout, chair and curator, Department of Anthropology. The exhibition originated at the UCLA 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.
PUBLICATION	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.
SPECIAL PROGRAMS	In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum's Department of Education is planning an array of special programs for families, school groups, teachers, and adults, including a lecture series, a film festival, dance and music performances, weekend panels, workshops, and gallery talks.
SPONSORSHIP	The exhibition 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.

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For more information, contact the Museum's Department of Communications, 212-769-5800.

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