Dogon Hip: Tradition and Modernity in Mali

FAIN: MP-50041-07

Museum for African Art (Long Island City, NY 10029-8405)
Enid Schildkrout (Project Director: September 2006 to August 2008)

Planning for a traveling exhibition and a catalog on tradition and modernity among the Dogon and their ability to adapt their culture to changing circumstances.

"Dogon Hip"is a travelling exhibition of the art and contemporary material culture of the Dogon people of Mali . A near-mythic status has dominated representations of the Dogon, depicting them as unchanging and homogenous, a paradigm for African tribal authenticity. This exhibition will attempt to break this stereotype, presenting the Dogon as a people with a complex history who actively engage with each other and outsiders in evolving their culture and their lives. Through vivid displays of both contemporary and ancient Dogon sculpture, painting and drawing, textiles and clothing, masks and mask accessories, furniture, pottery, leatherwork, and archival and recent photography, the eight to nine sections of the exhbition will reveal the Dogon's adaptation of material culture over a century.