Before Yesterday There Was Primitivism: How Major Western Museums Still Disservice Their African Art Objects

The display of African Art Objects in the museum is a topic that has become increasingly debated since the 1980s. This task has been taken on by several institutions with varying degrees of success and sensibility. Through examining two shows taking place almost four decades apart I would like to investigate the display, contextualization, and utilization of these African art objects, and whether the ideology of this display has evolved. The exhibitions ‘Primitivism’ in the 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (1984) at the MoMA and Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room (November 5, 2020- ongoing) at the MET both take place at large Western institutions in New York City with large public outreach. This idea of location is critical when examining the treatment of African art objects in the exhibitions as it affects public opinion and knowledge more broadly. Although I did not get the chance to experience ‘Primitivism’ in the 20th Century Art in person (for perspective my mother was only three at the time of this show), I was able to explore Before Yesterday We Could Fly personally. This difference in experience with the exhibitions could affect my understanding of each display, only being able to read retrospectively about one has certainly shifted my personal perspective on the material. That being said, it is still easy to identify the problems within each exhibition in regards to their treatment of this sensitive subject matter. While Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room better places African art objects in a relevant stage, it still falls back on the basis of ‘Primitivism’ in the 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and Modern in which the exhibitions use these objects to provide a basis for the modern art exhibited. 

To understand this claim fully, an analysis of each show is required. Starting with ‘Primitivism’ in the 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and Modern was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC from September 27, 1984, to January 15, 1985, and then was on view at two subsequent locations in Detroit and Dallas. The curator William Rubin was the director of painting and sculpture at MoMA from 1978 to 1988 and also taught art history at the college level on the side. Rubin’s aim for this show was to hang modern artworks alongside ‘primitive’ objects to illustrate a ‘common denominator’ between the objects and the paintings. The show was divided into four sections: Concepts, History, Affinities, and Contemporary Explorations. The first section Concepts displayed the modern response to the influx of tribal objects, this section was supposed to set the tone of the show with the idea that modern works contained ‘primitive’ influence. History honed in on this influence of tribal arts on modern painters and sculptors, building on the previous Concepts section. The Affinities section was the peak of the exhibition, described as a ‘group of superb tribal objects notable for an appeal to modern taste’. The last section of the exhibit, Contemporary Explorations, contained Western art after 1970 said to be inspired by ‘primitive’ cultures. The use of quotations around the word ‘primitivism’ is to highlight the association to Rubin’s definition of the word that serves as the basis of the exhibition. Rubin describes primitivism as, “the interest of modern artists in tribal art and culture, as revealed through their work.” This is where the exhibition falters in its treatment of these African objects. Through this definition Rubin applies ‘primitivism’ based on the Western view of the African objects, MoMA gave credit to the West for ‘discovering’ these objects and to modern artists for turning them into art. This is applied to the West as Rubin describes, to quote, the entire continent of Africa as a society that falls short of having gifted artists and a concept of fine arts. This highly Westernized view of these African art objects aids their aestheticization in the exhibit, erasing their history and context for the sake of modern art. The object is detached from its historical meaning in order to purpose Rubin’s theme. Even now retrospectively, these objects remain decontextualized on the MoMA’s website, providing captioning for most of the modern works leaving the African objects lost in not just their history but the exhibition’s as well.

Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room is an ongoing exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC that opened on November 5, 2020.  It was curated by the curatorial team at the MET with lead curator Hannah Beachler and consulting curator Michelle Commander. The aim of this exhibition lies in the lost community of Seneca Village, telling a futuristic story of what could’ve been if this community was allowed to thrive. Seneca Village was a predominantly black community in what was now a part of Central Park that thrived from the 1820s until its demise in 1957. Through the use of Afrofuturism, this period room aims to create a fantastical narrative of a time and dimensional traveling family and is separated into two different areas, the living room and the kitchen where the hearth is held. This hearth is decorated with the work Digable Underground 2021, a vase by the artist Roberto Lugo featuring the nineteenth-century abolitionist Harriet Tubman. This vase serves as the object through which this family transcends. Within the living room, a commissioned work OUT / SIDE OF TIME 2021 by filmmaker Jenn Nkiru playing on a futuristic five-sided television, is the center of attention. Most of these staple pieces were commissioned by the MET specifically for this exhibition, the other objects taken from the MET’s collection line the walls and auxiliary spaces of the room. This is where the supposed progressiveness of the exhibit starts to falter. The objects taken from the MET collection have a lack of information about them, most likely due to the ways the museum had acquired them. This further pushes these African art objects to the background of the room, while the modern commissioned art shines in the spotlight. Critiques of this show from “Artforum” commend the show for falling back onto pop-culture references in place of its view of the present. They also critique the show's disregard of the 2020 movement against black violence in America, even though plans for the show have been confirmed to have begun before the movement. Their last critique is one that I personally believe can be said about both of the exhibitions discussed, the exhibition is lacking especially considering it is produced by an institution with high collar funds. Although the concept behind Before Yesterday We Could Fly is inviting to audiences and brings the idea of Afrofuturism to a larger audience, I still would not define the exhibition as a ‘proper’ period room. It idealizes the lives of Black Americans and almost directly ignores that the history of Seneca Village tragically ended when the city forcibly removed the residents from their community to build Central Park. The focus of this exhibition then is on the modern and contemporary works the MET commissioned, using the guise of a period room to contextualize them under a collective black history.

Taking both of these exhibitions into consideration when discussing the display of African art objects offers a perspective that transcends just the question of progress via time. Even though these exhibitions take place almost four decades apart, their backgrounds are quite similar. With large institutions behind them, it is hard for these exhibitions to acknowledge the African art objects they use in a radical sense, especially since they lack information on these objects used. In terms of ‘Primitivism’ in the 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and Modern, the MoMA and Rubin force these objects to stay colonized and overshadowed by Western art. Rubin could’ve still drawn connections between the objects and modernism without a blatant disregard for African culture and the creation of art. It is this curator bias that fails these African art objects, forcing them to serve as context only and not allowing them to be presented in their own right. This is not to say that Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room serves these objects much better using this similar institution format. Although the MET by inviting Black curators to produce a room full of objects made by black artists creates a new conversation on the topic of representation in the museum, they still fail these African art objects that are thrown into the exhibition. The MET, like the MoMA and most other large Western institutions, have little to no record or context around the African art objects in their collection. These objects selected for the period room either lack a label or are explained by a simple region and estimated date, for example, the object simply titled Crucifix and described as being from the “Kongo peoples” from the seventeenth century. This object is placed on the fake wall of the kitchen area, alongside other period objects, as framing for larger and commissioned works that take the center stage. This limited information I was able to find about Crucifix did not come from any labels I had seen at the show, but rather from my own research on the MET website searching through the exhibition objects. This lack of information in the exhibition about the displayed African art objects shows again curator bias, wanting to focus on the commissioned work that the show is centered on. Before Yesterday We Could Fly is advertised to the community as an empowering show focused on the history of Black Americans with connections to an ancestral past, however, colonization still festers through this lack of information and pushing aside of these objects.

Representation does not always mean just the placement of an idea or object into the mainstream world. These large Western institutions like the MET or MoMA owe it to their broad audiences to correctly display and identify the art objects they include in their conceptual exhibitions. They also owe it to avoid misinformation rooted in a racial bias, as Rubin had tried to assert with his idea of ‘primitivism’. In conclusion, even though 36 years separate ‘Primitivism’ in the 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and Modern and Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, the museum’s way of thinking and treatment of African art objects has little improvement. The idea that these objects exist to contextualize modern art rather than serving a purpose of their own is still heavily prevalent in their display today.