Migrating Objects: Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection

 

Vessel ("aduno koro")
Mali
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 248

 
 
 

MIGRATING OBJECTS

Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection

February 15, 2020 — June 14, 2020

Peggy Guggenheim challenged boundaries as a patron and collector and is celebrated for her groundbreaking European and American modern art collection. Migrating Objects: Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection focuses on a lesser-known, but crucial episode in Guggenheim’s collecting: her turn in the 1950s and ’60s to works created by artists in Africa, Oceania, and the indigenous Americas.

Migrating Objects represents a remarkable occasion to view 35 rarely seen non-Western artworks Guggenheim collected, shown at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection as a cohesive whole for the first time. This exhibition presents Guggenheim’s African, Oceanic, and indigenous Americas objects in groupings privileging their original contexts or, alternately, in dialogue with European works from her collection by avant-garde artists who appropriated ideas from cultures beyond Europe’s borders. These opposing modes of display enable an exploration of the flawed narratives that Western culture imposed on objects of this kind.

Migrating Objects emerges from an extended period of research and discussion on this largely ignored area of Guggenheim’s collection ‎by a Curatorial Advisory Committee of experts, which has led to exciting findings, including the reattribution of individual works, among them the Nigerian headdress (Ago Egungun) produced by the workshop of Oniyide Adugbologe (ca. 1875–1949), which is on view in the exhibition.

The exhibition’s Curatorial Advisory Committee comprises Christa Clarke, Independent Curator and Scholar, Arts of Global Africa, and Affiliate, Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; R. Tripp Evans, Professor, History of Art, Wheaton College, Mass.; Ellen McBreen, Associate Professor, History of Art, Wheaton College, Mass.; and Fanny Wonu Veys, Curator, Oceania, National Museum of World Cultures, The Netherlands; with Vivien Greene, Senior Curator, 19th- and Early 20th-Century Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, who edited the exhibition catalogue.

 
 
 

Watch the trailer of Migrating Objects: Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

 
 
 
architecture-pgc-exterior-evening-16-9.jpg
 
 
 
 

Man Ray (1890 – 1976)
Peggy Guggenheim
1925(?)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Gift, Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein
2011.47

 
 
 

An American expatriate like Peggy Guggenheim, Man Ray arrived in Europe in 1921 soon establishing himself as the unofficial photographer of the elite and artistic crowds of Paris. It was thus fitting that he was to record Peggy, on several occasions.

This print belongs to a photo session for the Swedish weekly Bonniers Veckotidnig, for an article on influential foreigners living in Paris.

This photograph has become symbolic of Peggy’s graceful youth and social standing. She is wearing a cloth-of-gold evening dress by Paul Poiret and a headdress by Vera Stravinsky.

 
 

Exhibition Preview

 

Element of ceremonial house
Papua New Guinea, Maprik, East Sepik Province
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 240

"Tatanua" mask ("malangan")
Papua New Guinea, Northern New Ireland
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 232

Lidded container
Mali
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 249

Two-faced helmet mask ("wanyugo")
Côte d’Ivoire
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 244

Headdress ("kholuka" or "mbala")
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 254

Vessel ("aduno koro")
Mali | Possibly 16th–early 20th century
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 248

Figure of a hornbill
Côte d’Ivoire
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 242

Suspension hook
Papua New Guinea, East Sepik Province
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 235

Male figure
Ancient West Mexico
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 265

Two Horses
Corfù
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 259a-b

Female figure
Ancient West Mexico
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
76.2553 PG 264