Explore highlights and key themes from the Fowler’s permanent collection exhibition, Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives

World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts Across the Indian Ocean co-curators Prita Meier and Allyson Purpura present the exhibition’s overarching themes and bring to life some of the finest objects on view. They also will recount how the relationships forged with the National Museums of Kenya and the Bait al Zubair Museum in Oman enabled unprecedented loans on view for the first time in the United States.

Program begins at :10 seconds.

Part of the exhibition: World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts Across the Indian Ocean

Tom Joyce presents his artist talk Lingua-Ferrum as the closing lecture of the Interdisciplinary Symposium held at the Fowler between November 9-10, 2018 in conjunction with the exhibition Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths.

To celebrate the opening of African-Print Fashion Now! exhibition co-curator Suzanne Gott presents the dynamic story of this cloth: its inspiration in Indonesia, its manufacture in Europe, its African identity, and its current status in the global marketplace. Also co-curator Betsy Quick will converse with Ghanaian-Nigerian fashion designer Titi Ademola (KIKI Clothing) and British-Ivorian designer Alexis Temomanin (Dent de Man). Runway models will show off some of their recent designs.

Part of the exhibition: African Print Fashion Now! A Story of Taste, Globalization, and Style

Recent years have witnessed unprecedented changes in US-Cuba relations and in Cuba’s dual internal economies: the domestic sector and tourism. This panel discussion will address Cuban cultural identity, tourism, and the reinsertion of Cuba into a global market. It is moderated by Raul Fernandez, Professor Emeritus at University of California, Irvine. The panel includes Jorge Duany, Director, Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University; Adolfo Nodal, Partner at Cuba Tours and Travel; and Mrinalini Tankha, Postdoctoral Scholar at University of California, Irvine.

Part of the exhibition: Nkame: A Retrospecitve of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayon

Presented in conjunction with the Nkame exhibition, these presentations offer an investigation of diverse aspects of Abakuá, the Afro-Cuban fraternal society that inspired Belkis Ayón’s art. UCLA Professor of History and Anthropology Andrew Apter will give a talk titled “Abakuá: Ritual, Memory, and Sacred Geography in Cuba and Southeastern Nigeria”; and independent art historian and curator Judith Bettelheim will speak about “The Public Face of Abakuá and the Work of Belkis Ayón.” The talks are to be followed by a question-and-answer period.

Part of the exhibition: Nkame: A Retrospecitve of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayon

In conjunction with the exhibition Art of the Austronesians, this major symposium explores the history and development of the arts and cultures of the Austronesian-speaking peoples—from their prehistoric origins in what is now Taiwan to their successive seafaring migrations over millennia throughout the Philippines, Indonesia, the Pacific, and beyond. Distinguished scholars present current research revealing new insights on Austronesian archaeology, arts, and history.

Part of the exhibition: Art of the Austronesians: The Legacy of Indo-Pacific Voyaging

In conjunction with Spirits in the Loom: Lao-Tai Textiles, Ellison Findly, Professor of Religion and International Studies, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, examines the powerful ritual textile that emerges from the symbiotic relationship of the shaman and the weaver in northeastern Laos. As the shaman chants about visual images in his trance narrative, the weaver translates what she hears into mythic, hybrid images on the loom. Join Findly as she explores why the transformative ritual textile with its mythic, hybrid designs is so central to Lao-Tai culture. Co-sponsored by the Textile Museum Associates of Southern California, Inc.

Part of the exhibition: Fowler in Focus: Spirits in the Loom: Religion and Design in Lao-Tai Textiles

A rising force in the contemporary art world, artist Jacolby Satterwhite utilizes a variety of new media to explore themes of memory, desire, and personal and public mythologies. His videos, digital prints, and performances include a variety of references from paintings by Caravaggio, to Harlem drag queen ball culture and personal family gatherings. From these points of departure, he weaves a time-based narrative out of the nonsensical intersections of text, rendered objects, and performance. In this evening conversation, Satterwhite dialogues with Lanka Tattersall, Assistant Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), about the inspirations that inform his artistic practice.

Part of the exhibition: Disguise: Masks & Global African Art

Singular Spaces curator Jo Farb Hernández will discuss her photographic survey of the elaborate fanciful art environments and idiosyncratic sculptures of self-taught Spanish artists. Hernández, who is a professor at San Jose State University and Director of the University’s Thompson Art Gallery, spent close to fourteen years researching this project and writing the almost 1200-page book complementing the exhibition. A 6 pm concert of Spanish guitar music and light refreshments precedes the talk.

Part of the exhibition: Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments

The dazzling array of artworks in Earth Matters serve as inspiration for posing new, cross-disciplinary questions about the politics of conservation in Africa. Bridging the sciences and the humanities in a provocative and fruitful encounter between the fields of law, literature, conservation biology, art history, and the geographies of food production, UCLA scholars consider how we might counteract “business as usual” and imagine new possibilities for a more equitable and sustainable future.

Participants are E. Tendayi Achiume, Binder Clinical Teaching Fellow, School of Law; Judith Carney, Professor, Geography; Yogita Goyal, Associate Professor, English; Kevin Njabo, Africa Director, Center for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; and moderator Gemma Rodrigues, Curator of African Arts, Fowler Museum.

Part of the exhibition: Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa

The beautiful textiles in Resplendent Dress from Southeastern Europe are primarily drawn from the Fowler’s impressive collection. If these clothes could talk, they would have some interesting tales to tell about their origins and how they came to the Museum! At this lunchtime gallery talk, join associate director of the Center for the Study for Regional Dress Barbara Belle Sloan as she unveils the personal histories behind some of the textiles currently on view.

Part of the exhibition: Resplendent Dress from Southeastern Europe: A History in Layers

Concurrent with the Fowler in Focus exhibition Mandela for President: South Africa Votes for Democracy Fowler Museum director of education and curatorial affairs Betsy Quick recounts South Africa’s first free election in 1994 and highlights textiles and art works created in response to the end of apartheid.

Part of the exhibition: Fowler in Focus―Mandela for President: South Africa Votes for Democracy

In Extremis: Death and Life in 21st‐Century Haitian Art explores how leading Haitian visual artists have responded to a tumultuous 21st century, an era punctuated by political upheaval, a cataclysmic earthquake, devastating hurricanes, epidemics, and continuing instability. Consisting of approximately seventy mixed-media works by established artists and a rising generation of self-taught genre-busters, the exhibition offers unflinchingly honest and viscerally compelling reactions to Haiti’s contemporary predicament.

Part of the exhibition: In Extremis: Death and Life in 21st Century Haiti

Beginning with the establishment of the first Chicano art gallery in 1969 in East Los Angeles, Chicano artists launched a collective reimagining of the urban landscape through photography, graphic arts, murals, and large-scale architectural plans, as well as through painting, sculpture, installation, and drawing. This exhibition immerses visitors in this era by mapping the diverse social networks among Chicano artist groups and art spaces in Los Angeles during the 1970s, including Asco, Centro de Arte Público, Los Dos Streetscapers, Goez Art Studios and Gallery (Goez), Los Four, Mechicano Art Center, Plaza de la Raza, Self Help Graphics and Art, and the Social Public Art Resource Center (SPARC).

Artists used their work to map another L.A.—as part of a social protest and community empowerment movement. The exhibition presents little-seen work and archival documentation that reveal a complex history of how artists both navigated and imagined the social spaces of Los Angeles.

Part of the exhibition: Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement

Second Skins juxtaposes two separate traditions of fabricating vibrantly graphic clothing from the inner bark of trees: one shared by diverse peoples who live in and around the Ituri rainforest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the other produced by the Ömie of Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific. Focusing on twentieth century and contemporary iterations of possibly ancient traditions, the exhibition will explore barkcloth’s contemporary “migration” from the body to the gallery wall, highlighting the genre’s artistic inventiveness and the differing ways the two traditions have interacted with the international art market.

Part of the exhibition: Second Skins: Painted Barkcloth from New Guinea and Central Africa

Large-scale figurative paintings and drawings and an installation by José Bedia come together in this major retrospective that explores the artist’s spiritual genealogy as it relates to his Cuban-based religion and its central African source, as well as his explorations of the beliefs of indigenous American peoples. It is here that this “transcultural pilgrim” has found so much personal material for his spiritual and artistic practices. The exhibition also includes an altar created by Bedia and three alcoves that present selections from his vast collection of indigenous arts—ledger drawings from the Southern Plains, peyote boxes, Yaqui masks, and Central African power figures—that are the wellspring of his creativity.

Part of the exhibition: Transcultural Pilgrim: Three Decades of Work by José Bedia

Fowler director Marla C. Berns will consider ceramic healing vessels from the Upper Benue Valley. These fascinating works are often modeled to reflect the ailments they help combat; for example, a pot that plays a role in healing back problems has a barbed structure resembling a spine.

Part of the exhibition: Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley

Since the end of World War II, the State Department has called on performing artists to play the role of cultural ambassadors, a practice that has experienced a resurgence in the last decade. Jazz great Kenny Burrell, leading jazz historian John Edward Hasse from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and music legend Quincy Jones discuss their experiences as cultural ambassadors and the importance of jazz as a diplomatic tool. Tom Schnabel will moderate the conversation.

Part of the exhibition: Jam Session: America’s Jazz Ambassadors Embrace the World

Life in Ceramics surveys the range of perspectives found among contemporary Korean ceramicists, bringing together for the first time the work of five important artists: Yikyung Kim, In Chin Lee, Kang Hyo Lee, Youngjae Lee, and Kwang-cho Yoon.

Part of the exhibition: Life in Ceramics: Five Contemporary Korean Artists 

View video and digital film works by five contemporary artists with deep connections to Africa— Yto Barrada, Cláudia Cristóvão, Alfredo Jaar, Georgia Papageorge and Berni Searle—shown in Los Angeles for the first time. Each offers a visually seductive exploration of geology, geography, botany, memory, exile, or loss, especially as these areas of inquiry relate to a world that is simultaneously globalizing and fragmenting.

Part of the exhibition: Continental Rifts: Contemporary Time-Based Works of Africa

The Papunya Tula Artists company is the founding force behind the Australian Aboriginal desert painting movement. Established in 1971–72, it is today the movement’s multi-million dollar flagship. Vivien Johnson, Global Professor at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, introduces her landmark publication tracing the history of this remarkable company and art movement with a lecture detailing the lives and works of selected painters of the more than two hundred artists in the movement. A book signing and reception follow.

The book Dollar Dreaming by New York Times art critic Benjamin Genocchio traces the dramatic growth of the Aboriginal art market, nearly non-existent in the 1970s and now estimated to be a $500-million-per-year industry. Genocchio presents excerpts from the book, featuring interviews with curators, collectors, and the artists themselves, and explores the somewhat tense and controversial phenomenon.

Photographer Nik Wheeler and Azzam Alwash, the director of Eden Again/Nature Iraq program, discuss the history and present-day conditions of the Iraqi marshlands with UCLA anthropology professor Susan Slyomovics. Co-sponsored by the Center for Near Eastern Studies.

Part of the exhibition: Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya

Photographer Nik Wheeler and Azzam Alwash, the director of Eden Again/Nature Iraq program, discuss the history and present-day conditions of the Iraqi marshlands with UCLA anthropology professor Susan Slyomovics. Co-sponsored by the Center for Near Eastern Studies.

Part of the exhibition: Iraqi Marshlands Then and Now: Photographs by Nik Wheeler

Hot or iced, bagged or loose, black or green—whatever form it takes, enjoying a cup of tea is an act performed at least three billion times a day. Tea has played many profound roles on the world scene—as an ancient health remedy, an element of cultural practice, a source of spiritual insight, and even a catalyst for international conflicts—so naturally the ubiquitous beverage has been a prevalent theme in the visual arts. Steeped in History brings together magnificent art from three continents and many centuries, including rare Chinese ceramics and paintings, 18th- and 19th-century Japanese ceramics and prints, extraordinary English and Colonial American paintings, historic photographs and documents, tea-serving paraphernalia and furniture from many countries, and much more—to tell the fascinating story of tea.

Part of the exhibition: Steeped in History: The Art of Tea

The work of contemporary artists from Africa and the Americas demonstrates the power and continuity of Mami Wata as a source for creative inspiration. Visual artists Bolaji Campbell, Eve Sandler and Sonya Y. Clark, along with filmmaker Giovanni Savino, discuss their works in the Fowler’s current exhibition in this conversation led by curator Henry Drewal examining the relationship between Mami Wata devotion and artistic expression.

Part of the exhibition: Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas

Independent scholar Toms Ybarra-Frausto considers art and the changing nature of the immigration experience through the lens of “the archive and the repertoire” — a framework for understanding and transmitting cultural memory. This lecture examines the archive (written texts) and the repertoire (performative texts) in U.S.–Mexico border art and ultimately disputes the notion that border art is a manifestation of recent years.

Part of the exhibition: Cara Vemos, corazones no sabemos: The Human Landscape of Mexican Migration

Tradition And Innovation

Part of the exhibition: Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda