Reconfiguring an African Icon: Odes to the Mask by Modern and Contemporary Artists from Three Continents

by HUE

In collaboration with Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s (the Met) departments of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art and Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas artists such as Romuald Hazoumé (artwork displayed to the left) and Calixte Dakpogan from the Republic of Benin have reimagined the  iconic form of the African mask.

The exhibition is explained as such:  ”These ironic tributes to the mask as the African form of expression most renowned in the West are considered within a wider art historical context through their juxtapositions with works in a variety of media by modern and contemporary American artists.”

Reconfiguring an African Icon is on display at the Met in New York City, NY, March 8, 2011–August 21, 2011, at the gallery between Michael C. Rockefeller and Lila Acheson Wallace wings on the first floor.