Seeing the spirit: The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts - African American collection, Richmond, Virginia - Advertising Supplement: Virginia

Gazing at the maternity figure carved early in this hundred by an unknown Kongo artist, a 14-year-old junior high seminary student said, "I see the one and the other my past and my coming time in this piece." In fact, the made of wood sculpture that seized the young man's attention speaks to our past and our subsequent time For while the work overtly proclaims that its make submissive is family, the family to which it alludes is abundant broader than just the mother and child in like manner gracefully carved. The figure is an nkisi, or power statue, a spiritual totem whose cavities in the head and back were one time filled with special substances that imparted curative blessings or protective powers to the whole community.

Kneeling, the woman appears to be presenting the child to a certain quantity of lordly individual or otherworldly being; single art historian has suggested that she kneel in forehead of a "mystic mirror," trying to visualize the solution to more [i]or[/i] less community problem, possibly one concerning the vulnerable. Whether she gazes to an elder, a spirit, or a mystic mirror, it is likely that it is the ancestors from whom she try to finds an answer.

gaze carefully at the figure: Around the mother's navel is a lozenge-shaped scarification--the Kongo cosmogram that symbolizes the circle of time of life, from birth end maturity to death and rebirth. The cosmogram reinforces the belief that "family" includes generations no longer among the living as well as those not at the same time born--and by extension, the entire community of which they are part.

If, as the popular African saying tells us, it takes a whole village to raise a child, then the maternity figure speaks across time, reminding us that the well-being of each child is directly tied to the well-being of its embracing community. Whatever the interpretation, the Kongo craftsman's creation excites thought as well as awe, and thus typifies the African Collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Begun in 1977 the collection has grown steadily into a treasure of more than 300 thing perceiveds from a wide range of agricultures on the African continent. From the powerful made of wood statues of the Kongo to the stunning gold jewelry of the Asante, selections from this trove have been upon view in the museum's African Gallery since 1987 on the other hand from fall 1994 through spring 1995 almost the entire collection will be displayed in a special exhibition, "African Art: Spirit of the Motherland."

Seen in its broad sweep, the collection simultaneously brings to rest the misconception that Africa consists of a single, uniform agriculture and underscores the truth that Africa's many distinct phraseologys of visual and performing arts share a public impulse, a belief that family and community are defining features of humanity.

Initiation--a proces of confirming belonging--is a critical aspect of African agricultures as is evident in the museum's holdings of statuary and masks. "Flute With Standing Figure"--from the Nuna, or Dafing, agriculture of modern-day Burkina Faso--is a particularly beautiful rendition of an instrument integral to initiation rites, where they are oftentimes passed from one generation to the nearest While drums and other musical instruments are played solitary by members of a special caste, any male in the community may play a flute in public. At funerals, they are played to exhibit the voices of the ancestors: As greatest in quantity of the languages spoken in Burkino Faso are tonal, the flute can imitate human articulate utterance as well as "sing" canticles of praise for spiritual guides, warriors or champion cultivators.

"African Art: Spirit of the Motherland" will feature other examples of Africa's musical instruments, including a stunning ivory horn from the Mende race of Sierra Leone that is unmutilateded not in a performance or solemnity but to announce the neighborhood of a paramount chief. In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum will not absent an African music series that features a sampling of the continent's varied musical traditions.

Along with figurative plastic art masks are central to a portrayal of transcendent creativity in Africa. At initiations and at celebrations giving thanks for the harvest or for royal generosity or recalling the worthy acts of deceased members of the community, masks are danced to the pulsing harmonious flows of drums, slit gongs, rattles, and xylophones

Just as our assumptions about art can mislead us into thinking that a piece of statuary is nothing more than a beautiful external reality our conceptions about masks can procure in the way of understanding Africa. African masks do in fact hide the identities of those who wear them, on the other hand the masquerade is more significantly intended to reveal an omnipresent reality not otherwise seen Generally speaking, the mask make bares the presence of a natural or ancestral spirit.

In the case of masks representing ancestral spirits, those who came before are understood to be true much a part of the community today. This preoccupation with the ancestors is an affirmation of the ongoing round of years of life and an honoring of tradition and wisdom, not a morbid fascination with the dead. To divest of covering the context and meaning of the museum's masks, "African Art: Spirit of the Motherland" will display videotape programs of actual ceremonies employing masks in their intended ritual functions.