Sahel:Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara

Abstract

For a long time, the Sahel has been a harsh environment where human survival has relied on courage, forbearance, ingenuity, and faith. For some, faith came through Islam; for others, it came from ancestral spirits and unseen supernatural beings and forces. Three great empires—Ghana (300–1200), Mali (1230–1600), and Songhay (1460–1590)—and several other kingdoms thrived in this world of sand and thorn trees. This was due to the people themselves and to the Niger River that gave them access to riverine agriculture and animal husbandry.The exhibition Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara comprehensively captured not only the long history of this great geographic sweep of Africa, but also the marvelous material cultures that thrived there over the centuries (Fig. 1). The exhibition included some 200 works that represented the cultures of the three great empires as well as those of the diverse peoples who have made the Sahel their home. These objects all reflect how artistic virtuosity expressed itself across the centuries in stone, fired clay, wood, bronze, gold, and other metals, woven and dyed textiles, musical instruments, and illuminated manuscripts.In order to achieve this comprehensive coverage, Alisa LaGamma, the Ceil and Michael E. Pulitzer Curator in Charge of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, and her colleagues, Yaëlle Biro, associate curator for the Arts of Africa, and Hakimah Abdul-Fattah, research associate, brought together an amazing collection of works. These came from national museums in Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal and from several other museums in Africa, Europe, and the United States. In a successful effort to overcome the long separation of these works from the Sahel's history and legendary states, Alisa LaGamma and her colleagues spatially anchored them in proximity to displays about the historic landmarks of those bygone times. In selecting the objects for exhibition and in designing their presentation, they also consulted with many scholars in the humanities in Africa, Europe and the United States, thus making the authorship of Sahel truly global. In addition, they drew upon the rich interdisciplinary nature of several generations of scholars and research. At the same time, they sought to introduce new forms of material culture that are part of the cultural record, but which have remained relatively unfamiliar even to specialists.The exhibition was organized into several galleries in which temporal and thematic components were placed near to one another. The introductory gallery described the Western Sahel and explained its etymological root in the Arabic word for “shore.” For the Sahel is in effect the southern shore of the Sahara. This gallery provided additional orientation to the exhibition by including both monumental and miniature ancient sculptural creations. Included here was a three-ton eighth-century megalith in the form of a lyre from western Senegal. Because of its weight, this megalith had to be conveyed from Senegal to New York via ship and not by air.The period galleries included the third to thirteenth centuries, the ninth to fifteenth centuries and the fourteenth century to 1900. Matching thematic galleries consisted of Epic Pottery and Architecture, Archaeology, Emergence of the Fulani (Peul or Fulbe), the Umarian Conquest, and the Bamana Segou State.A special focus was placed on magnificent terracotta works from Mali's Inland Delta of the Niger and a third-century equestrian Bura terracotta (Fig. 2), unearthed from a necropolis in Niger. A large gold pectoral disc from the twelfth or thirteenth century, found in Senegal, is a unique object because of its size, beauty and age (Fig. 3). However, it is also unusual because archaeological gold jewelry has rarely been found in the Sahel. This is paradoxical because the gold fields of the Sahel exported enormous quantities of gold to Europe and the Middle East between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. It may well be that such artistic gold jewelry was created for local use but in later years was melted down into raw product for export.Impressive wood sculptures of the Bamana, Dogon, and Tellem captured both the beauty of these artistic traditions as well as the span of time over which they were created (Figs. 6–7). Musical instruments, so essential to the peoples of the Sahel, occupied a separate gallery and included string and percussion instruments. Some wonderful ancient textiles from successive centuries were also exhibited (Fig. 9). Large photo murals, maps, and photographs enhanced several galleries. The lighting was effective throughout all the galleries, being soft and diffuse or sharply focused as appropriate.The grasslands and Sahel of West Africa were once my permanent home for several years. I was sent to Mali by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assist Malian and Nigerien public health colleagues to eradicate smallpox and control other dreaded communicable disease. These included cholera, measles, meningococcal meningitis, sleeping sickness, and yellow fever. Viewing the Met's Sahel exhibition, memories of people, experiences, historic places, and monuments sprang to mind. How wonderful it was to sail the Niger River in canoes, climb to the top of the minaret of the fourteenth century Djinguereber Mosque in Timbuktu and walk across the hot roof of the Friday Mosque at Djenne! As I stood next to the tumuli in the great Inland Delta of the Niger, I wondered what lay inside. In Hamdallaye, once the capital of the Peul Empire of Macina, I climbed through its ruins and in Gao, I looked with awe at the Tomb of the Askias. These were the roots of my own scholarly and emotional attachment to this remarkable part of the world.Sahel: Art and Empire on the Shores of the Sahara was a spectacular exhibition that broke much new ground in illuminating the artistic heritage of this vast area of Africa within its historical contexts. In so doing, it informed the audience about the art traditions of times past as well as provided insights into those of the present that descend from them.Sahel was accompanied by a range of impressive programs and performances. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many had to be suspended in mid-March with the temporary closure of the Museum. However, the exhibition was featured on the Met's website as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. During the Museum's hiatus, excellent virtual tours of the exhibition were also available as videos on the its website. Virtual visitors could also gain remote access through a comprehensive web-based exhibition guide and a section featuring 181 exhibition objects. The final date of the exhibition was moved to October 26, 2020 to accommodate possible visitors after the Museum's reopening.An impressive hardcover catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition. Edited by Alisa LaGamma, it featured contributions by David C. Conrad, Roderick McIntosh, Mamadou Cissé, Paulo F. De Moraes Farias, Giulia Paoletti, Yaëlle Biro, Ibrahima Thiaw, and Souleymane Bachir Diagne. The volume is entitled Sahel. Art and Empire on the Shores of the Sahara (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2020. 304 pp., hardcover, $65.00.