Three shows, currently on view in Manhattan, exemplify these three approaches, enabling an evaluation of their respective advantages and drawbacks. Having observed that most museum visitors engage African sculpture in brief, cursory encounters, Dr. Susan Vogel, the Center's Director, decided to teach Western viewers to enlarge their appreciation of the works. To that end, she has enlisted the photographer Jerry L. Thompson to write a photo-illustrated essay about looking at African sculpture. In the prose part of his catalogue text, Mr. Thompson declares we must go beyond our preconceived schema for interpreting African sculpture.
Western aesthetics is a good place to start making contact with African sculpture.
Though he concludes that we ultimately cannot know these works, Mr. Thompson recommends longer, more intense looking. The pictures he has created to accompany his essay, some of which are displayed within the exhibition, efficiently emphasize the physical and abstract sculptural aspects that are the theme of the show. In the galleries, Dr. Vogel has arranged the unlabeled figurines, furniture, and masks not according to their original function, subject matter, medium, style, or place of manufacture. The notion of directing the viewer's experience through aesthetic lenses is made literal in the exhibition by means of eyepieces, affixed to vertical poles, through which the spectator is invited to obtain a pre-selected view of some of the works. A bit clumsily effected, this intriguing idea proves unsuccessful in actuality.