Exploring their visual arts and artifacts helps improve understanding about Myanmar, Iran, Central African Republic, and Cuba. The ancient art and artifacts from these countries predate their modern statehood, making it challenging to find, for example, art that can be definitively located within what is now the Central African Republic. However, Iran has remained relatively contiguous since its heyday as the Persian Empire, and Cuba has boasted a vibrant modern art scene. That, and the citys substantial Cuban population makes it easier locate items of visual culture easily around New York.
Central African Republic
The museums tend to curate collections of sub-Saharan African art together. African art is displayed in the Museum of Natural History, as if African people can be more readily situated in the context of plant and animal life, hearkening to outmoded racist and colonial beliefs and primitivism. Moreover, the displays in the Museum of Natural History do not single out any items from the Central African Republic specifically. The Central African Republic is not mentioned except in relation to the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest exhibition, whereas some of its neighbors like the Democratic Republic of Congo are mentioned in the sections on visual culture. A visitor can only talk in a general way, assuming that the art of neighboring groups will be similar to that of the Baya, Banda, and other Central African Republic ethnic groups. The Brooklyn Museum has a more extensive and humanized collection of African art and ritual objects than the Museum of Natural History. Even here, however, no object was labeled as being from the Central African Republic specifically and the vast majority of objects are from West Africa.
The displays of art from the central regions of Africa do share several elements in common that indicate the worldviews and cosmologies of these animistic cultures. Most objects are made from wood, enhanced with animal parts like bones, teeth, shells, and features. There are also some metal sculptures such as from bronze, but none from the Central African Republic. The art displays show the importance of ritual, and also that art itself was less decorative and more about symbolic and spiritual functions including the donning of ritual masks. There is no way to know from looking at objects whether the society is matriarchal or patriarchal, but the art does reflect the level of economic development in the society.
Cuba
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has on display one of Wifredo Lams paintings. One of the most famous of all...
…historical evolution of the Buddhist state, and how the Buddhist kingdoms of Myanmar amassed wealth and power through the use of a state religion as a means of social control. However, the statue tells the viewer nothing about any other dimension of the society including whether it was matriarchal or patriarchal. It can only be assumed that the society was patriarchal as well as socially stratified but the artwork itself does not speak to these issues.Based on this one item, it is also impossible to know if Myanmar was highly developed or not; only that they had the facilities to create bronze statues, and that most of the wealth was within the monastic quarter; daily life is not here depicted. Yet the only other piece of Myanmar art on display at the Asia Society is in fact a scene from daily life: two men with guitars: Thaung Tin and Friend, a photograph taken in 1997. The two musicians are seated on a large tree trunk. There is nothing to indicate anything about social stratification, economic development, or gender roles in the photograph. However, it can be gleaned that Myanmar did borrow European instruments like the guitar into its popular culture repertoire. The image also shows how globalization leads to…
References
Asia Society.
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Museum of Natural History.
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