Cameroonian ceramics, textiles and beadwork featured in Fowler Museum exhibition
Dining with Kings: Ceremony and Hospitality in the Cameroon Grassfields” opens Dec. 17
The Fowler Museum at UCLA explores global arts with an emphasis on works from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the indigenous Americas—past and present. This exhibition Dining with Kings: Ceremony and Hospitality in the Cameroon Grassfields opens at the Fowler Museum on Dec. 17, 2017.
"In the Grassfields region of Cameroon in West Africa, people may dine with their king, but a king never dines with his people. As the center of a kingdom’s economic, spiritual and political life, the Grassfield’s king is unique among men. His exalted position is underscored by the injunction against his consuming food in public. When before his people, he ingests only ancestral substances such as palm wine and special leaves.
“Dining with Kings: Ceremony and Hospitality in the Cameroon Grassfields,” on view at the Fowler Museum at UCLA from Dec. 17 through April 15, 2018, presents stunning examples of Cameroonian ceramics, beadwork, textiles, embroideries and carvings in an installation that explores how the rituals and objects surrounding royal dining and food were about more than mere sustenance.
This intimate study of hospitality in the western area of Cameroon in the 19th and 20th centuries uses examples of royal arts — notable for their use of restricted iconography and prestige materials — to represent ideas about status, diplomacy and hospitality. The exhibition will ask viewers to consider how dining practices establish connections and hierarchies between members of the same society, and how these same practices inform encounters with members of other societies.
“Dining with Kings” is part of the Fowler in Focus series, dedicated to exploring aspects of the museum’s permanent collections in a gallery housed within Intersections: World Arts/Local Lives."— Erin Connors, Nov. 30, 2017
This post is an excerpt, read the full article at the UCLA Newsroom website.