Tami Blog 4: African Vision: The Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection

African Vision: The Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection

African Vision: The Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection is an exhibit that recently showed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art from February 15, 2007 to September 7, 2008. The Tishmans began collecting African art in 1959 and over the next 20 years built one of the greatest private collections in existence. The Walt Disney Company bought the collection in 1994 with the intent to permanently house the exhibit at Epcot Center. Although it was never publicly display while at Walt Disney, the collection was made available for exhibition loans and publications both in the US and in Europe. Then, in 2005 Walt Disney World Company gave the 525-piece collection to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art.

Collection Principles

This exhibit displays 88 objects from the Tishman collection. It is divided into five sections – “Follow the Art,” “Masks,” “Ideal Figures,” “Power & Prestige,” and “Explore African Art.” These sections can be reached by clicking on a drop-down menu at the top right of the page. There was no indication of why these particular pieces were chosen or any explanation of the chosen titles for each section. For example, in the “Masks” section, is this every mask in the collection or just certain pieces? Also, there are figures exhibited in the “Power & Prestige” section. What makes them different from the figures shown in the “Ideal Figures” section? The section entitled "Follow the Art" is essentially a timeline of important events concerning African art.

Object Characteristics

Perhaps the decision to not place any informational data on the section page was a conscious one, as the result is a very powerful visual of a large photo of a piece of African art when you click on a section. Additional pieces of each collection are exhibited in thumbnails to the left of the large photo. Once you click on a piece of art, that piece is then shown in a large jpeg in the middle of the page. Each piece has at least one accompanying jpeg that shows greater details of the object. None of the photos can be zoomed.

Metadata

The metadata in this exhibit is very good. Accompanying each piece is information listing the African people from which the piece came, when it was created, its composition, size, unique number, and catalog number. In addition, each jpeg has the name of the object and the number of viewable photos available embedded in the frame of the photo. You can also click on More/Less Information and find out what the object is and how it was used. There is no discernable way to search the collection.

Intended Audience

This is a beautiful collection that would be of interest, not only to connoisseurs of sculpture, African art, or ethnic art, but also to the general public as it generated interest in the in-house exhibit. In addition, the last section of the exhibit (“Explore African Art”) includes a pdf document of fun games, such as word searches, puzzles, and Q&A’s, that could be utilized by teachers and their students. This site would also be useful to researchers studying African peoples and their art and customs.