Jacques Jerome Maquet 1919–2013

Abstract

Jacques Maquet was one of the greatest anthropologists of his generation, a loyal Belgian with much of the deliberateness, precision, and detachment associated with the literary genius of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. He made an indelible mark on African Studies. His writing and teaching has had a particular significance for scholars of African art in many spheres, including aesthetic anthropology, ethnography, museum studies, the introduction of Africa to a 1960s audience of scholars eager to know about Africa, and finally in the relevance of his findings to many other disciplines. Born in 1919, educated in Louvain in Belgium, the Sorbonne, and London, he continued throughout his life to be a force in both the Francophone and While some may contend that LACMA’s African art program has been a long time coming, there are advantages to starting from a virtually clean slate. First, what the term “arts of Africa” means today is increasingly complex, enabling dialogue about how one might integrate the historical with the contemporary, or work in tandem with curators of film, photography, textiles, and contemporary art. LACMA’s curatorial resources are rich and forward-looking, and there are opportunities for bridging formerly separate areas of interest and expertise. Questions have long arisen in comprehensive museums about which departments should collect and display contemporary arts by artists of African heritage. At LACMA, these questions are answered within exhibitionary contexts. For example, while there are often works on view by artists of African descent in LACMA’s Broad Contemporary Art Museum, there is also a contemporary installation in the Arts of Africa Gallery to promote dialogue with historical works on loan. Building networks across departmental divisions is part of a new landscape of meaning and memory at LACMA, as it is at a number of museums worldwide in the twenty-first century. Secondly, what do we want from a collection? And what is the place of ownership in today’s museum culture? The freedom to conceptualize exhibitions based on borrowed works stimulates a vast range of ideas and possibilities for display themes. Even as we build a first-rate collection carefully and thoughtfully in years to come, changing exhibitions will be enriched by loans and especially by collaborations with other institutions. For example, in 2008 I curated “Tradition as Innovation in African Art” in LACMA’s Ahmanson rotational gallery in partnership with the Fowler Museum at UCLA, where I was then affiliated. Half the works on view were from the Fowler’s rich collections, and an outcome was joint acquisition by LACMA and the Fowler of El Anatsui’s Fading Scroll. Likewise, the inaugural exhibition of the Arts of Africa Gallery, “Shaping Power,” reflects an institutional collaboration with the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. As it closes for a multiyear renovation, the RMCA is gaining exposure in Southern California while LACMA audiences benefit from the opportunity to behold these outstanding works that have rarely been lent before.3 Such partnerships can extend to African museums and to institutions throughout the world. Starting from a fresh slate has tremendous advantages, then, to imagine how collaboration can lead to potentially paradigm-shifting perspectives. In keeping with LACMA’s inexorably changing memory-scapes, “Shaping Power,” cocurated with the RMCA’s Anne-Marie Bouttiaux, explores the critical roles Luba royal emblems played in the formation and expansion of the Luba kingdom in the precolonial period.4 What these objects may have meant to those who made and used them and how they serve to stimulate remembrance is explained to visitors through a series of themes: the making of a ruler, the role of women, and the power of objects to effect transformation. A complementary video called Thinking with Our Hearts, produced by Agnes Stauber features Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha, a Religious Studies professor at Cal State Northridge who is a member of a Luba royal family. A contemporary installation entitled Congo: Shadow of the Shadow (2005) by the Luba artist Aime Mpane borrowed from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art dialogues with the reshaping of memory instigated by the exhibition’s sculptures. A shadow is projected by a male figure formed from 4,652 matchsticks, expressing the paradoxes of human fragility and strength as a gripping commentary about how power has been re-configured from King Leopold’s day through present-day strife in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The resilience and courage of Congolese people are expressed by Mpane’s installation, as memories are continually remade in the DRC and by visitors to LACMA as an ever-transforming theater of memory.