Benin Art@Smithsonian African Art Museum

The Benin collection was returned to Benin, its country of origin. However, at the time of its appropriation Benin was a part of the Dhahomey Kingdom. Benin has loaned

the Smithsonian, I believe, nine sculptures. 

Many western museums are returning African artwork to its rightful caretakers. 

The African Art Museum

This plate shows all the pieces returned from the Smithsonian collection. 

This is carved ivory from another exhibit. 

 

Sanctuary@Smithsonian African Art Museum

When I read about Tsedaye Makonnen's Sanctuary, at the Smithsonian African Art Museum I knew I wanted to see it. My friend with a car drove from The Phillips Collection in Georgetown to this museum. The clouds were circling and the day was moving into late afternoon. The African Art museum was going to close soon too. 

The seven crystal towers honored what the artist called "femme people" who'd been assaulted and killed in gender based violence. Their names cover the walls as their lives were reflected and refracted in the gently carved boxes stacked in towers brilliantly illuminated from within. Carved or etched with sacred symbols "Sanctuary" was an opportunity to sit with the loss. My friend and I were carrying a lot. Sanctuary was an opportunity to pause. 

It was a bit too noisy. A buzzer kept alarming and voices intruded into the silence which evaded the gallery despite its intention. 

#Say her name

Nia Wilson's name was among those witnessed. Ase. 

I appreciated the inclusion of elder women's names. These women held the girls close. Their embrace both comforts and affirms. Sudden death is a disconcerting disruption. One moment the person is alive and in the next gone. There is no space for contemplation. 

Sanctuary is a way to mend the riff, to heal the rupture. As witnesses we can provide a way forward for souls in limbo. 

Ase.

In other cases their are the famed Coptic crosses and bark paintings. I know this art well. I visited Ethiopia and have such artifacts in my own collection. I will never forget visits to such holy places like Lalibela.

From the Smithsonian website:

Tsedaye Makonnen: Sanctuary :: መቅደስ :: Mekdes

December 13, 2024 – Ongoing

Tsedaye Makonnen is a Washington, D.C.–based Ethiopian American artist. In the seven sculptures featured in this exhibition, she explores the dehumanization of Black women, femme people and their communities, finding connections in form, and themes related to the power of motherhood and sisterly solidarity.

Her seven light tower sculptures are made up of 50 boxes, each named after an individual lost to violence, enshrining their names with love as a form of comfort and solidarity, with a sense of hope for a different future.

Makonnen envisioned the central installation in this exhibition, Senait & Nahom | ሰናይት :: እና ::ናሆም | The Peacemaker & The Comforter, while she was an artist in residence for the National Museum of African Art as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. The sculptures are in dialogue with artworks from across the Horn of Africa’s history drawn from the museum’s collection, which the artist selected with curator Kevin D. Dumouchelle.

 

Harriet Tubman National Park@Cambridge, MA