Barbara Plankensteiner Livres

Published to accompany the major international touring exhibition which comes to Chicago in the summer of 2008, this monumental volume features more than 500 stunning reproductions alongside important new scholarship on the prized sculptures and carvings of the Benin Kingdom of sixteenth- through nineteenth-century West Africa (pre-colonial Nigeria). It brings together for the first time masterpieces that have been scattered all over the world since the end of the nineteenth century, while simultaneously documenting the fall of the independent kingdom, its reconstitution in the twentieth century and its continued existence through today. From elaborate bas-relief plaques to stately commemorative king's heads and towering elephant tusks embellished with detailed figurative scenes illustrating life at court and the heroic deeds of kings and warriors, the artworks gathered here glorifiy the king as the political and spiritual head of his people and honored his ancestors. The detailed workmanship and outstanding aesthetic quality of Benin's royal sculptures have been compared to the work of the celebrated Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini. And their wealth of iconographic detail conveys the sumptuousness of the royal court and its historical importance as a regional powerhouse in the Benin (or Edo) era.

Häuser der Weltkulturen und ethnografische Museen sind die Museen unserer Zeit in Europa. In einer sich wandelnden Gesellschaft, die sich öffentlich mit den Vermächtnissen des Kolonialismus auseinandersetzen muss und vor der Herausforderung steht, in einem von Migration und Globalisierung geprägten Gemeinwesen zusammenzuleben, rücken sie besonders ins Blickfeld. The Art of Being a World Culture Museum umreißt die inhaltliche wie methodische Spannweite solcher Museen und vermittelt einen lebendigen Einblick in Ausstellungsambiente, Arbeitsbedingungen und -verfahren, Sammlungen und Museumsarchitektur. Das Buch enthält Auszüge aus Gesprächen mit Museumsdirektoren und führt in Fotos die Räumlichkeiten, Exponate, Arbeitsumgebungen und -dynamiken von zehn ethnografischen Museen vor Augen.

Published to accompany the major international touring exhibition which comes to Chicago in the summer of 2008, this monumental volume features more than 500 stunning reproductions alongside important new scholarship on the prized sculptures and carvings of the Benin Kingdom of sixteenth- through nineteenth-century West Africa (pre-colonial Nigeria). It brings together for the first time masterpieces that have been scattered all over the world since the end of the nineteenth century, while simultaneously documenting the fall of the independent kingdom, its reconstitution in the twentieth century and its continued existence through today. From elaborate bas-relief plaques to stately commemorative king's heads and towering elephant tusks embellished with detailed figurative scenes illustrating life at court and the heroic deeds of kings and warriors, the artworks gathered here glorifiy the king as the political and spiritual head of his people and honored his ancestors. The detailed workmanship and outstanding aesthetic quality of Benin's royal sculptures have been compared to the work of the celebrated Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini. And their wealth of iconographic detail conveys the sumptuousness of the royal court and its historical importance as a regional powerhouse in the Benin (or Edo) era.

African Lace" (Afrikanische Spitze) werden die farbenprächtigen, industriell bestickten Stoffe genannt, welche seit über fünfzig Jahren das öffentliche Erscheinungsbild von Nigerianerinnen und Nigerianern weltweit prägen und zu einem fixen Bestandteil der nigerianischen Festbekleidung und Mode geworden sind. Zum ersten Mal widmet sich nun eine Ausstellung der Geschichte und kulturellen Bedeutung dieser zu einem grossen Teil in Österreich hergestellten African Lace-Stoffe in Nigeria. Ausstellungen: Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, 22.10.2010-14.03.2011; National Museum, Lagos, 21.03-17.06.2011; National Museum, Ibadan, 27.07-30.10.2011.