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| Past events - Moyo Ogundipe exhibition Photos of the event further down on the page |
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| Moyo Ogundipe and the Denver Art Museum |
| Moyo Ogundipe’s Serenade: Centaurs and Mermaids (2000) Collection of the Denver Art Museum |
Frederic Douglas wrote in the Denver Art Museum’s 1949 winter quarterly: “widespread interest aroused by the war in distant parts
of the world” had led the museum to “accumulate collections of African and other native arts”. He traded some surplus American
Indian art material for African and Oceanic material then held by European museums. Today, the DAM is one of the few museums
collecting contemporary African art.
The work from the DAM collection illustrated here is Moyo Ogundipe’s Serenade: Centaurs and Mermaids (2000). You may have
noticed it reproduced in the museum’s bookshop. Born in a Yoruba town in Nigeria in 1948, Ogundipe explains “I am a Yoruba artist
of the twenty-first century living in America (Denver). An artist in diaspora, both psychic and physical”. Influenced by traditional
carvings and textiles, “my colors are African, free, full, unrestrained, vibrant”. “There is the element of jazz, or musicality. I repeat
a lot of things to generate rhythm”. In this painting, images chronicle mythologies, African to be sure, but western classical civilization
was also an influence.
Images are “in-betweeners” Moyo Okediji, curator of African art, explains -- beings that are both here and there, spirits embodied in
people, people morphing into animals. Here the “osanyin” (centaur) serenades “mami wata” (mermaids), who perhaps seduce him
into the sea.
This work, last seen in a special DAM exhibition from August 2002 to April 2003, will likely reemerge in the new African gallery in the
Frederic C. Hamilton Building, now under construction (Opening in October 2007)
Article: James Bailey (Appeared in the Spring 2005 Douglas Society newsletter)
Quotations from The Denver Art Museum: The First Hundred Years (1996), and African Renaissance (Moyo Okediji, 2002).
of the world” had led the museum to “accumulate collections of African and other native arts”. He traded some surplus American
Indian art material for African and Oceanic material then held by European museums. Today, the DAM is one of the few museums
collecting contemporary African art.
The work from the DAM collection illustrated here is Moyo Ogundipe’s Serenade: Centaurs and Mermaids (2000). You may have
noticed it reproduced in the museum’s bookshop. Born in a Yoruba town in Nigeria in 1948, Ogundipe explains “I am a Yoruba artist
of the twenty-first century living in America (Denver). An artist in diaspora, both psychic and physical”. Influenced by traditional
carvings and textiles, “my colors are African, free, full, unrestrained, vibrant”. “There is the element of jazz, or musicality. I repeat
a lot of things to generate rhythm”. In this painting, images chronicle mythologies, African to be sure, but western classical civilization
was also an influence.
Images are “in-betweeners” Moyo Okediji, curator of African art, explains -- beings that are both here and there, spirits embodied in
people, people morphing into animals. Here the “osanyin” (centaur) serenades “mami wata” (mermaids), who perhaps seduce him
into the sea.
This work, last seen in a special DAM exhibition from August 2002 to April 2003, will likely reemerge in the new African gallery in the
Frederic C. Hamilton Building, now under construction (Opening in October 2007)
Article: James Bailey (Appeared in the Spring 2005 Douglas Society newsletter)
Quotations from The Denver Art Museum: The First Hundred Years (1996), and African Renaissance (Moyo Okediji, 2002).
| Below are some photos taken by Rand Smith on the opening night of the exhibition Click on any photo to see larger version |
| Douglas Society home page |