Department of the Arts of Africa, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas records

At the beginning of the twentieth century there were few public museums in the United States that collected and displayed objects from Africa, the Pacific Islands, or the Americas, so it was an important occasion in 1903 when the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences¹ created the Department of Ethnology, the forerunner of the Department of the Arts of Africa, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas (AAPA).² The Brooklyn Museum acquired its early collections primarily through museum expeditions conducted by Stewart Culin, who was appointed the first curator of ethnology in 1903 and served in that capacity until his death in 1929.³ Culin assiduously and perceptively collected art and artifacts for the Ethnology Department from the Southwest, Alaska, Northwest Coast, and California regions of North America, as well as Western Europe. During his tenure he also acquired objects from other geographic areas including Asia and Eastern Europe.

After Culin's death in April 1929, Tassilo Adam⁴ briefly took over the post of curator of ethnology. In September of that year, Herbert J. Spinden was appointed curator and, concurrently, head of the Education Department. Spinden aggressively promoted the role of the Museum in the field of education and successfully extended the department's activities into the New York public school system through lectures and loan exhibitions. As head of the Education Department, Spinden created and supervised the Museum's School Service Project. This service provided education packets and presentations for school children on various topics, including anthropological units on the culture and day–to–day life of indigenous peoples in countries and regions such as Mexico, Peru, and the Amazon.

Spinden's major collecting interest was in pre–Columbian art and in building collections from Mesoamerican and South American cultures. In the 1930s he traveled to Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, quickly expanding the Museum's collection of objects, from this region, including noteworthy pre–Columbian Andean art and textiles.⁵ Spinden continued to enrich the Museum's North American holdings by arranging to borrow and later acquire in 1950 the New–York Historical Society's Nathan Sturgis Jarvis Collection of Native American Art from the Eastern Plains. The department also purchased important Peruvian textiles from the Paracas Necropolis in the 1930s, including the Paracas textile [38.121].

In the mid-1930s, Spinden directed a massive recataloging project and reinstallation program. Under his guidance the department reorganized the Ethnological Hall (1934–1935) to include a greater representation of ancient American art and the architecture of the Maya. The aim of the reinstallation was to achieve rational order of the collection, placing objects into large groupings to emphasize scientific and educational aspects of the artwork. As Spinden outlined: "the problem was to find installation methods which would pick out the artistic merits of individual specimens and broad effects in fresh color which would pull the entire exhibit into an esthetic unity."⁶

There were many innovative exhibitions in the department during Spinden's tenure. In 1940, the department organized Art Finds a Way, an exhibition that documented the methods and skills by which the artistic impulse has found expression throughout history. In 1941 Spinden also organized a traveling exhibition of colonial and folk art of Latin America, America South of U.S. As one of the first major exhibitions of Latin American colonial art in this country, this exhibition attracted significant attention. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Brooklyn Museum acquired some of the works that were originally loaned to the exhibition. The department also expanded its scope in 1948 by contributing to Westward Ho!, which documented early American pioneers.

In the late 1940's, Spinden and Assistant Curator Nathalie Zimmern continued to concentrate on researching, collecting, and exhibiting Latin American and pre-Columbian art. The Museum exchanged numerous objects with the National Museum of Mexico. Many distinguished Latin American objects – in addition to African and Native American works – were lent or donated to the department, particularly by Mr. and Mrs. Alistair Bradley Martin. Spinden also obtained a Carnegie Corporation grant to strengthen the Library’s resources on Latin American art and he established program with Latin American institutions to exchange publications as well as objects.

Herbert Spinden retired at the end of 1950. Although the pace of acquisitions never returned to the spectacularly rapid rate seen during Culin's and Spinden's years, the aesthetic level remained constant, and in some instances — with the African collection for example — reached new heights.

Frederick R. Pleasants was named Spinden's successor. As assistant curator, Pleasants had reorganized the African Gallery and began a reinstallation of pre-Columbian objects. As curator, he reemphasized the Native American collections and organized several important exhibitions, including Art of the Northwest Coast (1950) and American Indian Rock Drawings (1952). Pleasants traveled to Europe in 1953, and acquired significant objects from West Africa and the New Hebrides Islands. In 1954, the department organized Masterpieces of African Art, which drew from collections around the world. However, the work of the department was often stalled due to Pleasant's frequent illnesses. Poor health forced him to resign in 1956.

With Flora Siegel Kaplan serving as acting curator from 1956 to 1957, the department devoted considerable time to the reorganization of its records and storage space. In addition, a new gallery of Oceanic art was opened to the public in 1957. At this time, an inventory and recataloging of the more than 600 pre-Columbian gold and jade objects from Central America was completed and a file of photographs of objects was arranged geographically.

Upon Kaplan's resignation in 1958, Assistant Curator Jane Powell Rosenthal was placed in charge of the department. She supervised the rebuilding of the African installation – a project of the Museum Fellowship Training Program – and part of the North American Indian Gallery, including the Californian, Southwestern, and pre-Columbian displays. In 1959, 380 objects were installed for the exhibit Ancient Art of the Americas and an exchange with the Museum of the American Indian-Heye Foundation brought an impressive collection of pre–Columbian art of the Eastern United States to Brooklyn.

In 1960, the department purchased one of its most significant objects, the African "Ndop portrait of King Mishe miShyaang maMbul," along with sculpture from the Sepik River area in New Guinea and 33 objects of Dutch New Guinea art. A few years later it obtained the Mujica collection of ancient Peruvian gold and staged the exhibition Gold of the Andes (1963).

In the early 1960s, a changing aesthetic in the museum world encouraged curators to develop a new approach to exhibiting objects. Curators began to recognize the value of displaying works so that visitors could perceive the artwork "in the context of history and social custom which defined its usage, the magic and ceremonial which surrounded it, and the myth which gave it meaning."⁷ They redesigned exhibitions with better identification and description of the objects, while incorporating appropriate historical and cultural frameworks. At the same time, department curators became concerned over the lack of display space and inadequate means of restoration for many of the objects. Inspired by these considerations, Rosenthal developed a three–part plan, calling for the establishment of an object conservation laboratory, reinstallation of the department's galleries, and publication of the collections. The Avalon Foundation provided funds to set up the object conservation lab and the New York Foundation awarded a generous grant for the construction of the Art of the Americas Gallery. Designed to display the greater part of the North and South American collections, the new gallery effectively filled the display space, offering visitors a comprehensive picture of New World Indian art.

The new Hall of the Americas was nearly completed when Jane Powell Rosenthal left on extended leave in 1965. When the Hall opened on May 1 of that year, the objects were presented in a more culturally–sensitive display: "The cultures represented are ways of life in the same human scale as our own; one of the purposes of this installation of over two thousand objects is to involve the visitor as if no barrier of time, place or glass existed."⁸ In addition, the first in a series of scholarly works on significant aspects of the collection was published; The Jarvis Collection of Eastern Plains Indian Art (Brooklyn, New York: Brooklyn Museum, 1964) was written by Norman Feder, a curator at the Denver Art Museum. After Rosenthal left, the new acting curator, Elizabeth Easby, organized Ancient Art of Latin America from the Collection of Jay C. Leff (1966). This expansive show included a large, scholarly catalog and occupied two galleries. Leff also provided funding to enable the Museum to install cases similar to those in the Hall of the Americas for the Oceanic collection.

During Michael Kan's tenure as curator in the department (1968–1976), the African and Oceanic galleries were refurbished and the popular African Sculpture exhibit came to Brooklyn. Assembled by the British Museum, this exhibition of two hundred objects from sixty-three collections emphasized both education and the drama of African art. Maps and labels were abundant and an audiotour and slide presentation provided background orientation.

In the early 1970's, Kan oversaw the renovation of the Hall of the Americas and the department lent over ninety of its Native American objects to shows at institutions including the Whitney Museum, the Emily Lowe Gallery, and the Hudson River Museum.

Although a period of financial adversity cut short many activities in the mid–1970s, the department continued to maintain an exhibition schedule. In addition to contributing to the Museum's successful Folk Sculpture USA exhibit in 1975, assistant curator Sylvia Williams organized Black/South Africa/Contemporary Graphics and Tapestries, a joint exhibition with the Brooklyn Public Library, in 1976. It was the first major exhibition in this country to show works of black South African artists.

In the early 1980s two important exhibitions were realized: African Furniture and Household Objects, which highlighted the ingenuity and skill of sub–Saharan artisans in their creation of objects for daily life; and Art of the Archaic Indonesians. Both were the first exhibitions on these topics to be shown in a major American museum. Also at this time, the African collection was strengthened by two important purchases: a Cameron, Bamileke beaded elephant mask and a raffia cloth appliquéd skirt from Zaire. The first major piece of Indonesian sculpture since 1963 was also purchased. In September 1981, the department reinstalled two more sections of the permanent Andean collection in the Hall of the Americas.

During the 1980s, under the guidance of Curator Diana Fane, the department reviewed and reevaluated its collections, initiating several inventory and survey projects. The curators inventoried and cataloged the Stewart Culin collection of North American Indian Art in preparation for an exhibition, Objects of Myth and Memory: American Indian Art at The Brooklyn Museum (1991). Departmental staff reviewed the early collection of Plains materials to ready it for reinstallation in the Hall of the Americas, and surveyed the African and Oceanic collections in the late 1980s. Andean textiles were also inventoried, rehoused, and reinstalled, making the collection accessible to researchers for the first time.

Substantial gifts added significantly to the department's Andean and African holdings, among them over two hundred textiles, ceramics, goldwork, and woodwork from Peru collected and donated by Ernest Erickson, and a group of Kuba textiles donated by the Roebling Society, a Museum members' group. In the late 1980s the Oceanic collections increased dramatically due to two major donations, which included a large number of important objects from Papua New Guinea; Vanuatu; and New Caledonia.

Starting in the late 1980s the African Gallery underwent three renovations, each designed to improve the space and make the gallery more inviting and educational to visitors. The final and most visible change occurred in 2001. During the African Gallery opening event on May 15, guests experienced a transformed space with bright, colorful walls and works situated next to photographs and videos showing the objects being used in their ceremonial or daily contexts.

In the 1990s the department organized two monumental exhibitions. Objects of Myth and Memory displayed more than three hundred Native American objects acquired by Stewart Culin during his expeditions. In 1996 the department participated in an inter–departmental exhibition of expansive scope: Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America (1996) involved curators from Painting and Sculpture and Decorative Arts as well as AAPA. The artworks, acquired by Spinden throughout the 1940s, had been dispersed among several curatorial departments. A cataloging and research project that began in the late 1960s on American Colonial art in the Museum collection was one motivation for the exhibition. The catalog to the exhibition serves as a comprehensive guide to Latin American colonial arts at the Museum.