Curator Q&A: Narrative Wisdom and African Arts

Narrative Wisdom and African Arts is the Saint Louis Art Museum’s largest institutionally organized ticketed exhibition of sub-Saharan African art. With more than 150 works in a variety of media, the exhibition explores how historical and contemporary African arts make visible narratives rooted in collective and individual memory and knowledge.

Exhibition curator Nichole N. Bridges, the Morton D. May Curator of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, has answered a few questions about the exhibition, which is on view October 19 through February 16, 2025, in SLAM’s East Building, with satellite displays in Gallery 301 and the Morton D. May and Louis D. Beaumont Foundation Gallery 117.

What works from the Museum’s collection helped inspire this exhibition?

Narrative Wisdom’s engagement with representational or pictorial scenes in African art is largely inspired by the Museum’s historical Chokwe chief’s chair—purchased on the art market by the institution in 1943—and visitors’ responses to it. However, my reflection on this type of imagery and the limitations and possibilities of narrative as a descriptor all dovetail with my own doctoral research and fieldwork in the Republic of Congo, which centered on 19th-century relief-carved ivories from west central Africa’s Loango Coast. Three examples are featured in the exhibition, including one from our collection. This interest, combined with the Museum’s strength in art made by Yoruba artists in southwest Nigeria, led me to pursue the acquisition of our carved door by Areogun of Osi-Ilorin in 2017. Specifically, with this exhibition in mind, we’ve made several recent acquisitions that will be presented for the first time in Narrative Wisdom and as satellite displays in Gallery 117.

What role do contemporary works play in better understanding historical narratives?

I think it’s important to state that the exhibition does not aim to present one-to-one relationships between contemporary and historical works. And most of the exhibition, some two-thirds of the checklist, comprises historical works. While the contemporary works are integral to each thematic section of the show, there may or may not be direct interplay with certain historical genres nearby. In general, the contemporary works demonstrate artists’ grappling with history and serving as a lens to demonstrate the resonances and relevance of history to the present—and perhaps to encourage each of us to consider the historical narratives that ground us as individuals.

The exhibition argues that oral traditions are fundamental to visual arts. Is there a particular work that exemplifies this thesis?

This is pervasive throughout the exhibition. The artworks represent a variety of ways this relationship may manifest. In some cases, a work of art might reference a specific story—whether in part or in its entirety. For example, there is a painting by a 20th-century Ethiopian artist that traces the origins of Ethiopia’s historic Solomonic dynasty (which ended with Haile Selassie’s rule) to the biblical encounter between that region’s Queen of Sheba and King Solomon in Jerusalem. This is actually one of the few works in the exhibition that relays a continuous narrative from its beginning to an end. In other cases, a work might evoke a proverb that can convey various meanings depending on the context. In studies of African art history, arts made by Akan artists in Ghana have long epitomized this concept, and two scholars of this material coined the term “verbal-visual nexus” to describe this prolific presence among Akan arts. To serve as a case study for this intersection between the verbal and visual, there is an entire gallery dedicated to an array of Akan arts in the final section of the exhibition, “Ancestral Wisdoms and Allegory.”

What role did the community advisory group play in shaping this exhibition? Why was it important for this show in particular?

Forming an advisory group in relationship to an exhibition project or other curatorial initiative is a pilot effort for the Museum and was facilitated by the recommendations of the Museum’s Study Group report to the Board in 2020. This exhibition project has been in the pipeline since approximately 2018, so the checklist was well-developed by the time the advisory group came to fruition. As such, the group’s brief has been focused on informing innovative approaches to content, interpretation, programs, audience development, and messaging for the exhibition. Comprised of local members representing St. Louis’s African and Black diasporic communities, the group has provided invaluable perspectives and contributed specifically to the development of the Explore Lab interactive feature in the exhibition, the conceptualization of programming, and grassroots-level outreach and audience development for the exhibition. Given the tremendous breadth of cultures and geographies represented by arts in the exhibition, the diverse perspectives and enthusiastic ideas of our advisory members on various aspects of the exhibition and Museum’s supporting initiatives have been invaluable.