Stanford (California), 3 August 2011
The Cantor Arts Center of the University of Stanford presents the permanent exhibition “Expanding Views of Africa.” It is an enlarged reinstallation featuring two hundred works from the museum’s collection as well as numerous loans.
The exhibition, which was inaugurated today, aims to broaden the conventional perception of African art by exploring everything from the ancient cultures, some of which date from before Ancient Egypt, to African contemporary artists.
The museum, founded in 1891 by Leland Stanford Jr., boasts three exhibition spaces. The first gallery houses contemporary works of art in various media from 1950 to today. The second space features African art from the sixteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Finally, smaller African pieces ranging from pre-dynastic Egypt to Sub-Saharan cultures are displayed in the last gallery. Visitors can thus view relics that date from before the unification of Egypt under the pharoahs.
The exhibition also includes the death mask of an Egyptian mummy, dating from the sixth or seventh century BCE, as well as a nineteenth-century figure used in the religious ceremonies of the “Fon” people in Benin.