In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name?” Now, a student co-curated exhibition at UC Berkeley’s Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology ponders the messages conveyed by the human face directly or subtly via the globe’s diverse cultures over the centuries.
“Face to Face: Looking at Objects That Look at You,” opening on Saturday (March 10), features a mix of Mexican and African masks, Hopi Kachina dolls, paintings of peoples of Oceania, Yoruba and Chinese carvings, Moche pottery, Taiwanese puppets, Swedish mannequins and much more selected from the Hearst’s estimated 3.8 million objects.
The goal is to spark conversation among visitors about crucial current issues and new ways of viewing the world.
The display winds around the world from Russian iconography from the 16th century and wooden masks from the West African Mende people’s all-women’s Sande Society to Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, as well as fierce warriors on Japan’s Satsuma stoneware largely made to satisfy Western tourists’ preoccupation with the Samurai in the late 19th century.
Faces of power, race, spirituality
“When we’re evolutionarily primed to respond to faces, it’s easy to see why we would respond strongly to an exhibit like this,” said Katie Fleming, the museum’s gallery manager and education coordinator.
As explanatory text for “Face to Face” notes: “A focus on faces highlights crucial questions about power, race, spirituality, and especially in this day and age self(ie)-representation. In depicting a face, after all, we can both glorify and demean someone. In judging a face, we can both love and fear someone. What can we gain if we look closely at how we look at faces, and what they say when they look at us?”
The exhibition, which is open through August, is the product of a fall 2017 freshman seminar led by Adam Nilsen, the Hearst’s head of education and interpretation, who also researches how people think and learn about Earth’s human inhabitants.
Nilsen’s class provided students with a close-up look at the inner workings of a museum of culture, object care and exhibition design, community-based research and storytelling and the museum’s role in the 21st century.